Tell us what you think of the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up [Archive]

Zero_Washu

03-05-2004, 08:04 PM

I will avoid the March changes since they are immutable at this time.

In Development Section

Settlement Portals being removed.

One word : AWESOME

Thank you, perhaps it will also reduce lag as even the portals cause some issues! Too many times portals are used as shortcuts.

EDIT: Please make these gems RECALLs and not SUMMONS

Content Revisions

Please be careful when mucking around with the Vesayens. The biggest need there is better portals for getting to various parts of the Vesayens. Currently the portals are in areas that are actually more difficult than the Vesayen's themselves!!!!

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates

Why have any major differences at all? AC is a mature game. The major effect buy sell rates had was to invalidate the need for certain towns. If you remove this restriction it could bring life to many towns that no longer have it. Also allow all mages to sell the full range of tapers/scarabs. Essentially the flavor of the towns should not be determined by their buy/sell cost. I remember living in Zak but leaving after you made it too expensive to work there.

Buffing Improvements

Great change!

As for item spells, can you make it the change only for items in the characters possession? I know this might be tricky considering the tricks used by Cast-A-Away where it casts on GUID without regard to who is holding it.

House Purchase Timer

Wrong idea. A timer only inteferes with those who have access to two or less accounts. The people selling on ebay or using villas/houses to obtain great trades in game will not be highly affected. Simply put you cannot turn over that many villas in a given month.

You could remove a great need for villas and their associated out of game value by allowing for house_monarchy recalls to go to the monarchs HOUSE! It might also give reasons for people to visit some of these outlying housing communities. Most are empty forever.

Also, why not allow people to recall to allegiance halls? That would help monarchies that do not have mansions/villas.

Treasure Changes, Phase 3

Please note one major area of disgust with your changes to bow. No one wants a 125 mod bow with a 290 wield. I suggest that any bow/atlatl/xbow that is not maximum mod for the next existing wield requirement be forced down to the previous. This would give value to these sub 130 mod bows you now put out. A 125 270Wield would be OK... but as a 290Wield it is most always junk unless the melee mod is very high. Another option is that if the damage mod is reduced but the wield is kept high is to bump the melee mod (even beyond current sing maxxes)

Now as for putting melee mods on casting items. My issue here is that most mages don't have enough melee defense to matter. HOWEVER if you put this on casting items I suggest you give mages/melees a way to debuff a casting item to reduce the SKILL or DAMAGE delivered from spells cast as compensations. Mages still rule this game.

I do not like the idea of a magicD mod. Your catering to the macro'd characters too much if you go this direction.

The Marketplace.

How about portal storming the main room? Put them back into a town or such :)

“Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades

I think not bringing up the maxes to equal will solve the issue. People will still go for the best mods. You could balance it out by providing tighter variances on these lower damage weapons. That would make them more useful.

CONCEPTS

Missile Weapon

Make it something selectable from the panel and not requiring re-loading the weapon. I don't think an ammo change is needed.

If you need a new animation I suggest bows be fired horizontal, atlats side swing, and x-bows hip fired!

EDIT: This change could be for changing the accuracy bar or allowing flat trajectory shots.

As for new elemental damages/etc...

Do Slayer properties instead, and make them imbues.

Chris

PS: Thats enough for now :)

Gdinero

03-05-2004, 08:04 PM

Pigroast, I believe that meant they were going to overlap gem availability with settlement portal availability for a month, then only gems will be available.

Zeds

03-05-2004, 08:11 PM

very nice article , but it does not make any changes to the loot to make the game worth playing in the meantime , and doesnt address the lack of cash loot at all.

still , nothing to help the game breaking loot nerf has been introduced

A+ for the , albiet late, efforts to improve communications

F--- for the (still ) lack of addressing the major problem

Insane Kitty

03-05-2004, 08:13 PM

Housing barriers:

if you put a pk timer on crossing it, it will stop ganks happenning at smaller guilds mansions/villas.

removing it all together will make it so that the large monarchies can camp there and kill people coming in before they can be ready to move. (or make it so that when you mansion recall, you recall to the basement beside the portal to go up, or add it so that you can do /house mansion_recall and /house mansion_recall_inside to have a choice)

Alot of us come to the mansion to buff in the basement, having no housing barriers will screw the lower levels.

With no housing barriers, will the portal to the basement be clan only or will anyone be able to come in as well?

_kendal_

03-05-2004, 08:19 PM

development and concept ideas are a GREAT idea and long over due... now if you guys could just stop nerfing you may be in luck!

Zero_Washu

03-05-2004, 08:20 PM

Insane Kitty....

I think you hit the 64k question. Those portals need to be off limits to those not in the monarchy. My other concern is that chests and such are going to very annoying to access if people can just come inside.

Hugo Rune

03-05-2004, 08:27 PM

Thanks for listening to us Ibn - some great info which gives us all something to look forward to...and plenty of topics to post about over the next few weeks :)

Zero_Washu

03-05-2004, 08:30 PM

Ibn,

May I suggest that the settlement recalls be RECALLS and not SUMMONS. These gems also need to be stackable.

-Poptart-

03-05-2004, 08:33 PM

I love that we are getting more info. It's great to know what is coming.

The idea with the house portal gems is great IMO, as well as the Rares and the possible modification of the slider bar to bows :)

Maybe I'll post more later as I absorb all of the information, but at first glance it's great :)

Ragnar Elder

03-05-2004, 08:35 PM

Devs, thank you thank you for listening to us.

I am really excited to get lots of new information, and as i scanned it quickly I saw alot of good ideas. Going to read it more thoroughly now, but very good move to get it out early so any feedback might help change things for the better.

Mistikal

03-05-2004, 08:42 PM

Perfect.

Gonna go read it in depth, but this is awesome.

Og II

03-05-2004, 08:48 PM

Outstanding! :)

Jinnsman

03-05-2004, 08:53 PM

Thank you for the info. It is incredibly exciting to get a glimpse of the future. I can't wait to see how AC continues to grow and evolve!

Long Live AC!!!

:D

Solarch_Arcar

03-05-2004, 08:54 PM

This is what we are talking about.

Awesome awesome LTTP! Ibn you are to be congratulated for listening to our request(as are the other devs) and following through with your words.

Ifuritah

03-05-2004, 09:17 PM

Well done guys! *clap*

Better comminication is the key!

I like just about everything said/being looked at.

LegionofLight

03-05-2004, 09:24 PM

Ibn, could you pass this suggestion on?

This would potentially be a compromise fix for the Marketplace, and should be easy to implement.

We have marketplace recall. This takes us to the main hub room.

Why not implement several more MP sub-recalls that take a player to the center of a specific side-room? This would help to reduce the log-in load on the main room (which is still crowded, without TBs) and increase overall convenience, by letting players portal to the specific room that they want to go to.

It would also naturally move players into specific side rooms without invasive and confrontational activity (as well as wasted time and $$) from +Envoys.

For example, if a player, wants to hit the buff bot room or the tradebot room:

/marketplace NW
/marketplace NE
/marketplace SE
/marketplace SW

(or shortened, to /mpne, etc.)

----------

Also, after reading the LttP, I was disturbed by the targetting of tradebots and not of other activities that result in far more graphical lag: specifically, buffing/spell casting in the main room, and the PKLight battles that happen in the MP because PKLs are too lazy to go elsewhere.

To be honest, I've noticed far more graphical lag due to PK fighting in the main room than from other source, as well as a significant increase in CoC violating behavior and language in a high density public area :|. That, imo, is the issue that should be more urgently dealt with.

rschroe

03-05-2004, 09:26 PM

Much better. Like knowing where you are going with changes and how long it will take. This will change mine and my friends view on where this game is going. Keep up this type of communication and hopefully AC will be around for long time.

Thanks

Reeper the Meek
Retired Monarch

AFWriter

03-05-2004, 09:42 PM

More and improved communication is always good.

I'm happy to see some changes, worried about others.

Could we ever get a definitave Letter to the Players about specific instances regarding the Code of Conduct in AC?

There are too many people (myself included) who can 'rules lawyer' the existing policies to death.

Also, outside of the proposed changes to housing (which doesn't fix the problem, but is at least a token step) -- are there any other long-term changes to the current setup in any phase of development?

In as much as client changes, CoC and EULA changes and +envoy issues (read; enforcement) impact game play. Can we have those proposals and changes addressed in the same manner as the client changes as well?

Maybe the best answer is to have a running 'Non-Client' changes section covering these issues, as well as ones like billing and logons.

Anyway, this is a good step in the right direction -- and I've come to expect nothing less. More communication + more input = better development decisions and and a better game for everyone.

Later,

Don!

Zowy

03-05-2004, 09:43 PM

Houseing purchase timer + settlement portal gems = multi-account EBay Villa seller love.

The houseing purchase timer is bad enough. But the settement portal gems will let the "profesional" realastate dealers skip the running part. Now they will just pop a gem and snatch up Villa's 20-30 seconds after they become avalable.............

Do you realy want to punish the entire player base with NON-fix to this problem???

Ganzor

03-05-2004, 09:44 PM

Will I get a Gem vender outside of my mansion? It's hard to show any of my friends who aren't in my monarchy.

Shadow Mouse

03-05-2004, 09:46 PM

OMFG! Incredible! Tubine, I think you finnally got my Christmas list ;)

Do you guys need an intern or something?
I'll work for free! I'll scrubb toilets! I just want to be a part of the team that makes me so happy! *swoon*

Thank you Tubine very much. Keep up the oustanding work!

-Shadow Windreaver / Shadow Soulrender (MT)
"May light fall gently on your shoulders."

wizard_redwolf

03-05-2004, 10:17 PM

Nice Job i definately think Turbine is headed in the correct direction with things

lop-ibn-sung

03-05-2004, 10:26 PM

Much better! Nicely Done!

Number-Sun

03-05-2004, 10:31 PM

Very ambitious. Looks like you have plenty of ideas to keep AC interesting. I like the quick buff and level Vii dispells. The melee modifier on a caster is a great idea. I am a melee with max life and suffer when trying to debuff a critter.

I think the timer on purchasing a house might slow down some of the resellers.

Also like proposed Allegiance changes. As it is no one has any real power without actually logging onto the monarch's account.

Theran_Bakagin

03-05-2004, 10:33 PM

THANK YOU for the increase in information.

While this does give us a LOT to think about over the months, it does allow us to respond in time for action to be taken.

Regarding the Settlement Gems..

I would agree that these items need to be a recall and not a summon gem. I would also suggest that these gems be NON stackable.

Someone mentioned that the gems in addition to the purchase timer becomes Real Estate *koff* Agent love...

By making them unstackable it causes someone who is using the "agent" idea to maintain LOADS of slots dedicated to gems... one per settlement location. Perhaps even making it unfeasible for the person to carry housing purchase items. on the same character.

Vendor Buy Rates

Thank you for returning this aspect of the game. Early on there was a category of player that SIMPLY was interested in making money through transferring items that sold low at one location and were bought higher at another. Simple caravan merchanting can be restored with this concept.. and perhaps even will give genuinely new players a way to earn cash without resorting to making applesauce for eons.

Casting Items

"Casting items will have the ability to generate with Defender due to the above change, and will also have the ability to generate with the Hermetic Link spell or cantrips for any of the spells that can be found on them."

Please clarify this a bit for me--does that mean that the casting items will be allowed to have all the normal cantrips (ie cooking/fletching/war/life) or ONLY Hermetic Link/Defender/Mana Conversion and the like?

Envoys

I fully approve of the idea of moving tradebots to the periferal rooms with use of the Envoys--coming from a Tradebot operator on Frostfell (one of the worlds where tradebots are crammed into the central room)

I am not sure of my feelings of Envoys removing inscriptions. Inscriptions have been used to encourage return of items "irretrievably" lost. If there is a standard and sanctioned method of removing inscriptions, the interaction of people getting inscriptions removed by the original owner is gone. This interaction caused an artificial communication source that is difficult to replace. There would be no need for someone to contact a stranger to remove an inscription.. instead they could wait for an Envoy to do it for them. This does, though encourage interaction with the Envoy staff and the player base. Allowing for the Envoys to be more than "Turbine Thugs" and more "Human."

Rares

I love this idea!!! Especially including ALL monsters as potential Rare drops. Yet another way to encourage the full loot check.

Thank you for the insight to the forward progress of the game!

Theran

sylphia

03-05-2004, 10:37 PM

Ibn,
Since you have asked for feedback to be seperated into the 3 different sections, I will TRY and keep them apart :) As such, my thoughts on the March stuff and the overall functionality of your new communication policy:

I think this new openness is fantastic! Being as up-front and honest as you guys can without actually giving away storyline content is a HUGE step in the right direction. We have complained many times that the old LttP was inefficient; by the time we got to see what was coming up, it was already coded for the prop and essentially near impossible to change. This gave the impression (to some) that our feedback was worthless, because by the time it was sought, it was too late to implement.

This new method resolves alot of that. We should, in general, have very few instances where we feel that we have been "ambushed" with sudden and major changes to the game. We should be able to see upcoming changes far enough in advance now, that we can offer our opinions, insights, and suggestions on if/how the proposed content should be modified, or even IF it should be implemented at all. I dont expect our feedback to DICTATE what you add, and it shouldnt in some cases. But at least now you can take what WE want into account before making major decisions that could potentially have major and lasting impact on the game as we prefer it.

Better communication, and EARLIER communication is always a positive thing. The more we know about upcoming content and the more of a chance we have to influence it, the less likely folks are to cry betrayal when something is added we knew nothing about. Poor communication has been an issue for a long time; this is a definitive step in the right direction to resolve that.

Changes propsed for March:
I am glad you decided to make each of those character options individually selectable. When I heard you planned to add all of that stuff at the same time, I got the impression it would be an "all or nothing" display, and quite frankly I didnt like it. But after the huge raucus over the Scarlet Letter, I didnt want to "nit pick" on the issue. I am glad you folks anticipated it and have provided for it :)

Now, I know this is too late for the March prop but it relates: Could we have the option to display our skill sets too? Just the trained and speced ones, no need to see what the player DOESNT have trained. This would be quite helpful when dealing with the newbies we are abotu to get. As a patron, one of the most commonly asked questions I received was "What should I raise nex?t" and its partner: "What should I train next?" If our vassals could toggle their skill sets to viewable, we wouldnt have to go through the tedious "Well that do you have trained NOW?" and "What is your skill in blank?" This needs to be an OPTIONAL display for those of us who prefer our privacy and for the PK folks. Also, I would like to see an option to toggle off display of our level and stats--perhaps remove the "Attempt to decieve other players" and replace it with "Show level/stats/skills" (each of the three shoudl probably be seperate choices). I understand that this has some impact on PK as well, but realistically, if a player has deception turned on, it defeats even high level assess person skils until the other player is close enough to bypass it. By then the fight is generally already on. This would of course render the Deception and Assess person skills moot, so they would need to be removed and skill credits/XP refunded--which would also suggest removal of the assess monster function; make it where we can just see what they have and make a smarter decision on whether or not to attack them WITHOUT having to tickle their fanny to see their stats.

Crafting options: WOOT!! All I can say is its about time. Thank you :)

OK on to the next thread for the rest of my feedback :)

Lutch

03-05-2004, 10:41 PM

Excellent, I like them are good.

Fellowship Spells, I am very much happy. It is simplar to Bard Spell in FFXI.

Question: What about split credit for Life, and Creature.

Life School full credit is: 12 (train) add 8 (Speced) (20 credit totals)
Life Self: 8 (train) add 6 (Speced)
Life Other: 4 (train) add 2 (Speced)

Creature School full credit is: 8 (train) add 8 (Speced) (16 credits totals)
Creature Self: 6 (train)add 4 (Speced)
Creature Other: 4 (train) 2 add (Speced)

Creature Other need to change to 'Bard Spell'. They are still same spells.

Mantis

03-05-2004, 10:42 PM

Frankly I don't have the patience to read ALL of the replies, but if I'm the typical AC player (and I think I am) then I would have to imagine they go something like this:

"OMG!! WE LOVE YOU TURBINE!! J00 GUYS R TEH ROXORZ!!!"

Which is pretty much what I have to say too. Thank you for all your hard work and for letting us in on the vision.

One quick comment on the idea of removing the settlement portals, would it be possible to just put these in another place? One that's out of sight, but still readily accessible? Such as adjusting the statue portals in each town to include a spot for these... I mean gems work too, as long as they're summons and not recalls.

Just an idea...

Alissa

03-05-2004, 10:46 PM

Regarding the settlement portals, why not move the statue closer and when you click on it it lists the settlements it can send you to?

Unsi

03-05-2004, 10:58 PM

There is a lot of good ideas in concept, and sometimes you guys can really be quite clever. However..... Removing all the house portals is the dumbest idea you guys ever came up with. WHO in the world said they were ugly? I read the posts a lot, and I never saw that comment. May I suggest that if the portals are "ugly", then encase them in a tower or building of some sort. Even a dungeon would be better than none of them at all! Honestly, you limit how we can travel around and you are commiting suicide. I have 7 accounts. I have stuck it out with you guys through thick and thin. I daresay that I have probably been involved with AC longer than some of your employees.
I bought DM BECAUSE of the house portals. Why would I want you to take them out when they have become a very important part of my playing style? Please do not do this! It is VERY important that you leave those portals accessable to the public. Many quests and dungeons will become completely obsolete if you make it hard to get to them. They will become just not worth the run. I stayed in a town and never left that area for months because I hate to run for an hour just so I can tie to some portal and go back after I get rebuffed, to fight for maybe 35 minutes or so, working through a quest. Why would I think that endless running to get from place to place would be fun?
My pack space is already limited because of Focis, and carrying multiple weapons (one for each damage), not to include things like Gems of Stillness, Healing potions, Stamina elixers, Mana potions, and the like. You want to make things easier for us? Make Healing kits stackable. I have to carry a packfull to go into a fight. Now you propose that your wonderful "Improvements" will be so lovely that there will be absolutely no room left for looting all that lovely treasure you say you are fixing up for us.
You dump on us, we take it. You dump more on us, we live with it. How much abuse do you think we can put up with? Honestly, please do not drive me away. Taking away the house portals I am afraid would be the last straw. I doubt I am alone in feeling this way.

Mantis

03-05-2004, 11:00 PM

Are we talking about the same statues? I mean the big bronze ones in towns... I think every town has one and each one has a portal in it...

Magik Brute of

03-05-2004, 11:02 PM

I am still not impressed with the drirection that you are taking this game.

I have played this game for over 4 years now and I love my charter and have a great time with my friends. But the changes to the loot system have killed my mage's playability. The burn rate on plats for my charter has gone up by about 10x. Where I use to burn 2 plats an hour I am now burinning 20 and with the value of loot I am not covering my comp costs. Let alone the cost of tappers. I may have been under the mistaken impression that the higher your skill got the less comps you will burn per spell cast. What this means is that I am spending more and making less xp.

Melee def bounus on wands. Would be nice if you don't screw it up and put a "melee def of 275 to wield" on them. Mages would NEVER be able to equip them. But here is an Idea : Wands that require a mana c of 250/300/325 with base mana c +% of say 15-19,20-24,25-29. That would give the mages (and anyone else with Mana C) trained a chance of getting wands that have the equalivant of a +45% to attack wepon (with tinking).

BTW Fellowship spells are something this mage neither requested or will EVER cast. I hunt solo for a reason.

The removal of the housing portals is a BAD idea. If you want to "clean" them up then put them in a dungeon like marketplace with wings of portals in "stalls" and make it accessable to all charters with a re-call command. The only thing you are doing is killing the housing macros access to the portals. And you have already done this with the timer (a bad idea IMHO as it hurts the casual player).

Frieze

03-05-2004, 11:14 PM

Great communication change :)

Edit as I'm reposting my comments on the proper thread heh!

Welsley

03-05-2004, 11:25 PM

Edit to remove comments that were in the wrong thread.

For this thread, I'll say that it seems you've adopted an AC2-style system of disseminating information to the players, and it's about time. Thumbs up. :)

Frieze

03-05-2004, 11:29 PM

Actually, if I could get a vehicle or an animal or something to make me move a lot faster, I'd be fine with housing portals going poof. :p

KPD157

03-05-2004, 11:32 PM

I think to go along with the Housing Gems would be an option in the Character Tab to actually toggle Portal tie :) That would make these gems and other portals that we use semi tieable till we wanna run through a portal and tie with the option toggled to on :)

Also I like the idea of a Subway or something for each Settlement bellow ground like the Residential Quarters accessable from the town itself and also a Way back from the Settlement to the Town its linked too :)

BillBraskey

03-05-2004, 11:41 PM

totally impressed.

good job.

Rauth

03-05-2004, 11:50 PM

Love it. Keep it up.

Sabu

03-06-2004, 12:17 AM

Ya.. the loot is one of THE most important topics to me. Any chance that you could raise the average value just a little more... please? more 3k items or 6-7k items? Just a little wish... All you ideas look pretty good. I hope the debuffing of BPs won't ruin march pvp too much.(since there is no way to counter it effectively) Keep up the good work and I cant wiat to see a new Holtsburg :)

All ac playrs might be interested in http://www.gamespy.com/titlefight/matches/xl4.shtml

Ac is in a small competition.(Got this info from Crossroads of Dereth)

Cuttler

03-06-2004, 12:22 AM

I don't particular care what the settelment portals "look like"...it isn't like I pitch a tent next to them and spend the day looking at them. They server a function to get me from A to B and I am not on the land block any longer than my character can run up to one and though it.

I do not wish to have to go purchanse a portal gem every time I want to get someplace. This is another poorly though out plan. So now if I die on a quest that I normally would have used an "ulgy" portal for, I'll have to go purchase another lovely gem just to get back to my body and fellowship because my ability to portal recall tough that "ulgy" portal will be gone. Please just leave the portals where they are.

You know I think you'd serve this comminity of players better if you sent out a questionair montly to ask the rest of us our opinion on what a hand full of people though about something. Might be an eye opening experaince for you.

DarkMarcsun

03-06-2004, 12:36 AM

I sincerely hope you realize how much easier it will be for professional house hunters to grab a villa now. Your main pack will more than suffice for holding every gem that drops you into a villa settlement. Guess we'll be lucky to see villas open for 30 seconds now.

Chubasco

03-06-2004, 01:07 AM

Good work on reducing time to buff ourselves! Buffing lost it's charm long ago, this is a good start :)

However, I didn't see anything in the Lttp to offset the upcoming armor debuffing change. Maybe I missed it because I scanned through it.

Also,
For some time, the Settlement Portal Hubs have been found outside almost all of the towns and cities of Dereth. These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly.... the removal of the Settlement Portal Hubs entirely.

The goal of these changes is to remove the ugliness of the Hubs, as well as encourage exploration and travel through Dereth’s wilderness.
Really? Come on guys.

Again, the game is supposed to be fun. Travel was fun 3+ years ago when everything was relatively new. Now being "forced" to run around is more annoying (i.e. LESS FUN) than being "forced" to look at them.

As for the housing barriers......how about allowing debuffs to be cast in both directions across villa and mansion barriers only. This would force those who don't want to fight into their basements where they'll be less likely to cause lag, and "out of site, out mind." If not, then basements, cottages, and apartments should remain "safe" spots for muling purposes.

Also, if you truely value player feedback and are interested in obtaining a true sample of information then you need to implement an in-game polling tool (see one of the links in my sig below).

Sabre-F86

03-06-2004, 01:07 AM

You people are starting to impress me. Keep it up. Letting us know in advance what is planned, is a great idea and will go a long way toward keeping people happy. Being able to put up comments to the proposed changes is an event greater idea.

So far everything you are planning is great. The manner in which you are communication with players is even better.

As a homeowner in an out of the way settlement, I look forward to the gems. I really hate having to portal all over the map just to get to the one place that allows me to portal to my home settlement. Good job. I look forward to it.

Jack Sparrow

03-06-2004, 01:11 AM

My overall impression is good. I like the coming changes save one.

I strongly dislike what the development team is doing to the settlement portal system. It is a nerf. The lag and eye sore rationality takes second seat at best. This is a nerf plain and simple.

At this point in time Dereth has been explored. This game is far from new and ALL of us old farts have seen pretty much next to every square inch of dereth. My Cell.dat can atest to that.

I see no reason at this point to heavy hand and force everyone to run amuck all over Dereth again. You try to save us tedium in buffing by reducing the time we have to invest in buffing but tripple the time we have to spend going places. Don't tell me that is NOT backwards thinking. The people that like this like it because it's how it was when AC was brand new and exploration was fun. . .it isn't anymore and AC has transformed into a faster paced game and is frankly a LOT better as a faster paced MMORPG.

The least you could do is make ALL of the gems for every housing portal available in some central location. Candeth keep or some other town for instance.

In short, my time is valuable, don't waste it or I wont waste mine on you and your ideas.

Jet-eye-nite

03-06-2004, 01:15 AM

Its like Ham-n-eggs in a skillet , I hear it talking :D . Like my log-in name " let the force be with you " ;) EDIT Also , maybe there could be additional portal spells added to allow us to tie to our favorite housing portal prior to their vanishing from site . I now use about 10 seperate housing portals to get around , so 10 new spells :p

Lila_MT

03-06-2004, 01:19 AM

I'll keep my response short and to the point.

Setttement Portals going away: Booooo! Hissssss!
Everything else you mentioned: Yay.

Sabre-F86

03-06-2004, 02:00 AM

Should've thought about the removal of settlement portals more before making my previous comment.

Upon further thought, this is going to put a major crimp in peoples ability to get around. A good example is the two temples at the north and south ends. Really the only decent way to get there is to take a settlement portal. Right now we can do that for free, and as often as we need it. Removing the settlements is going to mean stockpiling the gems. This leads to two questions concerning the gems.

1. How much are they going to cost?
2. Are they going to be stackable?

While having the portals available for a month so players can portal to a settlement and buy the gems is a good idea, what happens when the portals are gone and the player desires to go to a new place, one which he didn't think to buy a gem for?

I would suggest the addition of the gems to the game, but leave the portals in game for at least 3 months to see how useful the gems are, and how they effect the ability to travel.

A final comment concerning the stated reason for removal of the portals: To beautify Dereth? You gotta be joking! Who complained about them? Certainly none of the players.

Alpine

03-06-2004, 02:18 AM

I am heartsick. It is clear to me that the devs are determined to purge Dereth of anyone who is less than level 80.

First they deprived me of the ability to earn a living to pay for such mundane items as rent, mana stones, comps, reasonable armor and weapons. I nearly cried when I opened corpses of 80+ crits to find "loot" worth 500-1000p. A silver Tusker presented me with 21p. Of course, this was no problem for the supa-ubah-dubah's, all sitting in their villas with piles of plats, sings, and majors. Their comments of "Stop whining" sounded a lot like, "I got mine, screw you."

Now they are taking away settlement portals, which will make it nearly impossible for me to complete any but the simplest starter quests. Under the proposed plan, if I wanted to do the credit sell-back, I would first have to get to the Far Horizons Settlement to purchase a gem to get to the Far Horizons Settlement. I can do that in March. I can make a list of all the quests that I might want to do some time in my life and spend a week or two running around collecting and storing all these gems.

But what about future quests? I won't have a gem to travel through the portal to get to the dungeon out in East Hinterlands. Who will have it? The players who live in that settlement or the high-levels who have the ability to navigate through the wonderful wilderness full of dark revs and vapor golems that like to feast on mid-levels like me. And what will they want for those gems? Piles of plats or smalls or sings or whatever the unattainable-of-the-day happens to be. Which I don't have because the crits accessible to me drop **** for loot.

OK, enough of the bitterness. I offer a suggestion: Do away with the settlement portals if you must, but replace them with a guy in a hut who sells gems to the various portals that once stood there. Or make the gems available through a vendor in the nearest town.

I'm willing to be patient with the loot redistribution thingy, but I would like to see some evidence that this game is not just for the elite.

AC-Vet

03-06-2004, 02:25 AM

A Big Step forward in player communication.....
/e Gives a A+

Cassandra

03-06-2004, 02:31 AM

I think it's great, you guys are making mistakes, but actually correcting, and learning from them, being able to give input, and know that if we really don't want something, you guys probably aren't going to put it in, is a hell of a change from the past 5 years

The players giving input also speeds things up a lot, instead of you guys having an idea, implementing it, and then after two years of us complaining, finally do something about it, it gets fixed before there's even a problem

Gouru

03-06-2004, 02:42 AM

As much as I hate the pack space portal gems use, I am for bringing back the feeling of 'vastness' of the world. Something that the great proliferation of settlement portals removed.

Couple of points...

I hope the gems are 'Summon Portal' gems. For quest leaders preparing for a quest, it would be much better to be able to use a single gem to get the whole party to the destination.

Stacking gems would be nice. Mansion portal bots could maintain a stack of commonly used portals for the allegiance to use.

I would hope that summoned portals would still be tieable, so that people that use one all the time can still tie it and not need the gem.

And to mitigate the loss of portals slightly, portal tie 3 and 4 would be nice :)

Zowy

03-06-2004, 02:55 AM

Date Posted: 11:37pm Subject: RE: Peabunnie just stole a villa ....
I hadn't payed the sings yet. We were getting things ready for the trade and the guy asked if I was ready. I thought he meant to go to my cottage and trade the sings. I said yes and I didnt even see him release the villa. We stood there for a min and then I asked him if he was waiting on me. He asked if I was going to buy the villa or something. He had released it but I was one writ short.

Peabunnie stole it right then and logged. Then the guy I was trading with said he was quitting anyways and he logged off.

All this happened in less than 2 min.

http://vnboards.ign.com/Morningthaw/b5156/65412757/?10

----------------------------------------------------------------------

So do your really think settelment portal gems are a good idea??

You want to see this happening, more and more?

Without a secure way to trade houses or deeds. The "pros" will be getting more Villas than before. The cost of multiblue acounts will not slow them down one bit.

Ganzor

03-06-2004, 02:56 AM

Originally posted by Unsi
I stayed in a town and never left that area for months because I hate to run for an hour just so I can tie to some portal and go back after I get rebuffed, to fight for maybe 35 minutes or so, working through a quest.

How about you stop relying on buff bots?

jfilip112

03-06-2004, 03:02 AM

Something I think would be cool with removing housing borders would be the ability to lock your doors. I know this might be hard to implement since there are many factors. But maybe it would be possible to leave up the borders on windows and the roof and such so people could not just jump in; but instead players could use lockpick to lock and unlock doors to housing in order to get in and fight. I think this would be really cool and would bring some use to lockpick.

deltas

03-06-2004, 03:45 AM

You have lots of great ideas. I really like the advance communications. The idea of speeding up our buffs is very good. However do be careful with changes to dispel gems and spells.

I'm a mid-level Mage (108) with Critter, Life & War all Spec'd. It's difficult enough now to rid myself of debuffs --especially 7's -- without using a gem -- so I hoard the gems and use them very sparingly. I use my Awakner to rid my fellows of debuffs. In this particular area of the game, you can easily tip the balance and put the players at a bad disadvantage. That's not your intention I'm sure, but you could easily have that result if you are not carefull.

DadgaSilverhand

03-06-2004, 03:58 AM

since last sept/oct 2003 patches had wipe out my hunting spot for low level rerolls, i cant no longer camp Lost Garden Ruins, Dungeon Tatters, and other shadow strongholds that used to have shadow childs and few shadows.
Alloy quest mess up my low level characters and i had to ask my clanmate to help me to clear the difficult spawns so i can relog to my alt to recall out of there and never go back.
this forcing me to relocate to Fenmalien Vault, my low level melee tank is having hard time "Soloing" at 21/22 levels.

since this month's weapon loot nerfed, it is almost impossible to handle 3 shadows at once without buffs (see new server testings).

this March 2nd Lttp Follow-up.
saying the "3 Crystal" dungeons are getting upgrades.
PLEASE DONT MAKE DIFFICULT as Lost Garden Ruins and other upgraded shadow dungeons. Fenmailien Vault is last baston for shadow childs which are bit easier than shadows. i rather to use my lower level to camp shadow childs than using my main character to collect fen keys for xp or fragment huntings.

i did once visit Caul vault, it was hard and easy to get lost. i only went there once when i had a guide leading me by having a "Jump over portal" trick to avoid long route by taking short cut which i didnt know. it was before the level cap removed.

i never visit Shenolian vault, and heard it was so hard and crazy, so i took time to raise my magic defense base, but this upgrade version could throw a curve or wench at me by putting off lot longer than i want to plan to visit.

anyway, i really do look forward to new Nexus upgraded or revival.
i do hope that you Turbine to keep the vaults/vestibule spawns remain original, dont mind if throwing few extra shadow child spawns in Fen.
but those "unique" boss fragment and satelites do need upgrade beside a large gem.
try to keep the drop site safe.

Chip Ali

03-06-2004, 04:07 AM

I finally made an account because the issue of removing housing portals alarmed me.

Please, is it possible to place the a gem vendor where the housing portals currently are, rather than removing them entirely?

Some people rely on friends to pay their housing maintenance while they are away (on military duty, for example) and the removal of housing portals will cost them either their pack space or their time.

The proposed change will hinder quests incredibly. (I shudder to think of running the Walking Boots quest, for example, without the boon of the settlement portals.)

Why would you put the portal gems at the destination rather than at the departure? It is like to asking somebody to drive to France in order to buy a plane ticket there.

The Darkness

03-06-2004, 04:08 AM

The idea of rolling info out in this way is very good.

The actual info rolled out is even better.

AC is the most interesting and fun game out there; all of the proposed changes will only add to both of these aspects.

Cheers Turbine - I'll be playing this one for a long time to come :D

DracheDesAngst

03-06-2004, 04:45 AM

Begrudgingly, I think these are improvements and just the notion that we are going towards earlier announcements of information is fantastic. The only problem is you havent addressed the sorry state of mages for PVP or hunting in general.

Firstly, out of your own mouth you announced that you're hiring a testing team, therefore, we do not believe or rather we know Turbine up to this point has not tested changes to player dynamics. Whether this was a result of penny-pinching or a real cash flow problems is not known, but the result was Turbine over-reaction to vocal player concerns caused the utter destruction of mages as PVP viable characters.

Currently, our war and life spells are woefully inaccurate to the point of not being able to hit or effect anything other than a new player who hasn't learned how to walk let alone run. The addition of the aegis has compounded the problem given you now have to cause damage repeated in such a fashion that a mage has absolutely no chance of living through a battle with a melee.

The inclusion of weeping weapons was the most unbalancing lacking in vision change to be inflicted upon the game. What in the name of god was the responsible party thinking when this was thrown into the mix. Did anyone over there get the idea this was going to kill mages in 2-4 hits or cause mages to simply be self-healing until exhaustion. I know melees don't want to talk about this, but numbers and examples have been repeatedly posted and they have no such proof to backup their claims.

The slow speed of spell casting mixed with the perpetual lag has causes heals to be slow and inefficient in replacing lost hit points during a battle. This mean I'm spend more time healing myself than doing damage and the sorry state of thrice nerfed drains is not the answer.

After playing the same character through the twisted path of mage-dom for some four years there not much hope left. Turbine has endlessly nerfed the character into being nothing more than a buffbot.

As mentioned before the players who actually stress this game design are the pvpers, we hunt more and kill more than some worlds put togther (your own number show this). I find it ridiculous that any management staff has not done their homework doesn't have statistics proving me wrong. Where are your number on damage by melee types vs mage types. I know why you don't post something like this.. it wasn't done. You guys guessed and chose poorly.

I'm hoping someone actually tests these thing in the future and you people gape at the numbers when you figure out the damage and lack of enjoyment you've caused.

At least you're going in the right direction but this might take years to effect my character. Guess it's time to make him a buff bot and give up on him as a real character.

Drache

Abdula

03-06-2004, 05:08 AM

Lets put things into perspective well...mine at least.

People complaining about no level 7s on jewelry armor etc.

You pay what maybe 6-8 creds to spec Arcane Lore?

That leaves open to you spells from any of the 4 schools levels of spells 1-6 being able to be casted in an instant and require only a mana charge to keep items running for hours. These spells can NOT be dispelled by traps or other means.

People with access 7s spend up wards of anywhere from 10-20ish credits to train and spec their skill. Plats are not cheep. The spells can be dispelled.

Lets not forget the main reason for 7s were to be a spell a little bit stronger then 6s but lasted ALOT longer.

Another upside to those using arcane items is the lack of needing to train and spec life item and creature. Thus leaving options open to advance in other areas like melee and missile. Granted you might not have the highest firepower to dish out in battle but you can evade hits to last longer to deliver your blows.

The downside being the hunt for items with spells and stats that suit your needs/wants. With double even triple life 6 clothing and jewelry and armor this isn't so much of a problem just requires you to do some trading and hunting to get yourself a well balanced suit or suits if you like to prepare just for certain occasions.

-----------

Housing portals.

Just add a new /marketplace like hub with portals named after towns that contain settlement portals from their previous location. I understand the want to remove them to inspire exploration but runs to some places are just ridiculous.

If you remove them add in a function to hand your deed to an npc to acquire a spell to summon your housing settlement or mansion / stand alone cottage/villa. And add in a new hub like dungeon or 2nd floor to the arwic hub with portals to fairly obscure places that one might need to goto. Some already exist but are unknown to the casual player or are random spawning. like the heartland portal south direlands, direlands edge etc. adding a 2nd floor to the arwic hub wouldn't be hard to work into the story line I just thought of one off the top of my head that makes sence to the pre existing concept.

Em Bal Org

03-06-2004, 05:10 AM

Ummm...the settlement portals are ugly? Says who? I am fine with them and removing them from the game, to me, is not a good idea for peeps who have lower level toons that the runs would be difficult.

I am trying to convert a failed trade mule into an x-bower and this will suck for her for hitting the temples.

just my 2 pys.

-Em

Edit: Having a hub like area for settlement portals is a good idea imo.

Kilmor

03-06-2004, 05:13 AM

Sorry, you are wrong. Arcane Lore and items can never replace Life and Item magic, simply because you do not have enough slots or rarely find weapons/armor with all the banes you need. So arcane is basically a substitute for creature magic and should be treated as such.

thymus

03-06-2004, 05:29 AM

Don't get rid of the settlement portals. Buying gems has some advantages but pack space is too limited as it is. Making it harder to get around does not add the the fun.
Also the change to the location of the portal drop in Shoushi makes it more likely that you will get jumped on Darktide. Getting killed by level 126 players is part of the game but it would be nice if it were possible to travel a little bit as a low level player on Darktide. So don't put all the town portal drops right in town.

sylphia

03-06-2004, 06:13 AM

Kilmor,
Have you heard of dual- and triple-spell items?
You actually have PLENTY of slots on your toon to get all of the life pros up to lvl 6 and many of the creature spells you need, especially when you consider all of the quest items out there now. Rending weapons replace vulns and work MUCH better for melees/archers anyway. The only thing left from life magic is making mana--Life mastery items to cast S2M and H2M spells, Ulgrims Casting Stein, Trade Mana Elixirs...yup got that coervered too.

Item is alot harder to cover. You can wear Covenant or Olthoi Armor, which isnt buffable anyway so banes are moot. Finding a weapon with all of the necessary items spells AND getting a rend on it is much harder. If you only plan to hunt bugs, you can make do with an olthoi slayer weapon, which buffs itself nicely and does damage comparable to rends, though less. If you dont mind limited mobility, you can even get by without the portal spells.

Yes, Arcane actually CAN replace both (AND creature), if you are willing to give up some of your normal comforts. Now once you get to the higher end of levels, you will need to rethink your skills if you ever want to hunt anything besides monkeys and bugs, but you CAN do it; and as Abdula said, none of the Arcane items can be dispelled, so they have that as an advantage over cast spells. And on life spells...lets not forget that there are player-craftable gems for all pros and regens using alchemy, which you can buy from other players or make yourself.

Abdula

03-06-2004, 06:14 AM

Thats what I am saying. For the cost of arcane as opposed to life and creature speced people playing purely arcane based creatures dont deserve level 7s on arcane items. maybe a quest item here and there, those 3 rings that came out were not bad.

StarchaserX

03-06-2004, 06:50 AM

Sincerely, *Thank-you!*.

There are not enough ways to say thank-you for learning probably the most fundamental problem with LTTP and the 'all-of-a-sudden-changes' that essentially meant:

This is what's happening. Suck it up. If you do not like it, well, maybe we'll see what we can do next month.

Now there is more time to engage in rational dialogue, andnot the usual emotionally charged posts that come with sudden and usually unavoidable change.

Even if there are things we do not agree about, it allows time for a mental mindset to develop, allowing us to accept these changes with what grace we may or may not possess. (Think serenity prayer)

Of course, most of my bows are now worthless, but at least I know what to look forward to as well. That more than compensates the loss. And I appreciate deeply letting us know what's in store.

I love the idea of "rares". One suggestion: have it possible for weapons/castors to also spawn with quest graphics.

The look of many quest castors/weapons/armor is unique and to have say, a 150% +12m bow spawn with Prismatic Bow graphics would be pretty damned awesome. It would certainly set itself apart from the more common weapons by appearance alone.

Or a sword with aegis graphics, you get the idea.

Thanks again.

Dom on TD

03-06-2004, 07:29 AM

I like the faster buffing, but item is and always will be the school that slows me down. Eveb in 5 piece armor, it takes 56 spells to fully buff/bane my armor, undies, and shield. That doesn't even count my weapon(s). Whereas, people using bots are getting 1-12 item spells, unless they ask for armor banes seperately. All of my non self buffers wear unenchantable armor. Pleas reconsider speeding up item buffs.

Snorch

03-06-2004, 08:07 AM

Nice article. Goes a long way towards helping out in the future. Doesn't give me a reason to restart my account just yet, but a good move in the right direction.

One suggestion though: Could you look at putting in a poll at log in. That could help reach more of the masses that don't frequent the boards. (and protect themselfs from the often negative feed back that propagates here.) And make sure that EVERYONE that plays has some input. (not just the trolls)

PS: No insult intended trolls :)

Reeve Sparticus

03-06-2004, 08:10 AM

About the housing portals solution...

I agree 100% that housing portals all over the landscape should be cleaned up. It's easy to accidently stumble into one as you're traveling cross country, it takes a few seconds to figure out which one you want to take, etc.

I too originally thought it best to put the gem vendors right inside the settlements. However I've come to realize lately that most players would probably rather see the housing portal gem vendors inside the towns. Each town's vendor would carry the portal gems to those settlements that are closest to that town.

This would have the following advantages:

1) Placing the vendors in towns would help players frequent towns more often. It's a general concensus that the towns are too empty right now, so this idea could help remedy that.

2) Placing the vendors in towns would help players maintain the freedom of travel they have already been granted with settlement portals on the landscape. Thus you're not taking anything away from the player. For example, right now if you want to travel somewhere you've never been to before to complete a one time quest, such as walking boots, you can get around pretty freely by going to a town and jumping into the nearby settlement portal that takes you close to your next stop. If the settlement portal gem vendors were placed in towns you could pretty much do the same thing.

3) Placing the vendors in towns would help players by reducing their pack space allocation toward settlement portal gems. Players would only keep on hand the gems to places they frequent often. Placing the gems vendors in the settlements would cause players to tie up a lot more space in their inventory which would be looked at as a disadvantage.

If nothing else, I think this is one area you might want to run a poll to get an opionion from the players where they'd like to see the settlement portal gem vendors placed.

pacesetter

03-06-2004, 08:20 AM

:D

A giant THANK YOU and a huge GRATS on a job very well done!

This will prevent many backlashes and we greatly appreciate the advance notice and opportunity to comment on upcoming and possible changes. I am very happy with this and applaud the effort that went into it!

now for my comments on a couple of the changes:

settlement portals: Please do not remove them. I use many on a constant basis. This is my main mode of transportation around dereth in conjunction with the subway. My pack space is severely limited. and my burden is usually >90%. To have to carry several more items in order to get around is unthinkable. Also, it can take 20+minutes to run to some settlements in order to buy the gems, and for those in higher lvl areas this can be disasterous for lower lvl toons ( a lvl 30 trying to get to unspec or spec dungeon for instance). Gems = good, removing existing portals = very bad idea.

dispel revisions: level 7 versions; YAYYYY thank you!

potions; YAYYYY too bad the xp nerf blew away being able to lvl our mules without hunting them. but you already know the thoughts on this matter.

random number of spells=1-6: This one is a bad idea. While it increases the challenge and stress factor of the game it also can take key players OUT of a fight. I would seriously look at this one. It is not unfeasable to get several negative spells cast multiple times on you and the dispels are your only lifesaver due to healing being so slow. With so many vulns the damage comes fast enough that you can only heal, heal, heal. Many times my mage has used dispell rather than recall to survive a bad situation. I have used this on my archers and sword guys, too. If you fight mostly tusker, lugies or olthoi and get a few vulns from outlying baddies or the occasional fight with a magic caster, no big deal. But when you consistently fight MOSTLY magic casters as I and many others do, This will negatively alter the game to the point that I would be seriously analizing the change to see whether I would want to stay with the game. I love the magic casting baddies, especially in groups. It is my mage's PVP on even ground and to lose it would be my demise. Please reconsider this one!!!

Envoys: being able to remove inscriptions. Wouldn't it be much easier to let us remove them? Tying up an envoy for this doesn't seem feasable. The only reason I would do it this way is to get offensive material removed and leave the system as it is, meaning the one who inscribed it is the only one who can remove it.

Baddies killed: DT #1 with 13.5 million LMAO

Further buffing improvements: I think here I would explore (quest) (other) spells that would:
'buff skills' Id player's skills trained or spec and buff them. For instance a sword guy would get sword, racial skill, and trade skills buffed. A trade mule would get racial skill and trade skills buffedas well as any other trained skills. There are buffing programs that do this so it should be attainable.

'buff defense': cast armor , melee and missile pro's.

'Buff life pro's elemental' and 'buff life pro's physical'

You get the idea, I'm sure.

As for the other changes: cool. A couple I would look at in more detail but all are feasable to good to super!!

Thanks again for the opportunity to look at what is coming and the priveledge to comment on your work in advance!

Liaya

03-06-2004, 09:00 AM

Kudos to the folks at Turbine for communication established, letting us know what's in your minds :).

A suggestion for feedback though...

While it might make things a little unwieldly, it would be easier for me (and I'd think others, including the devs reading the feedback) to separate the topics to their own threads. For example:

Tell Us What You Think About “Hidden” Properties No Longer Hidden.

Tell Us What You Think About (In Development) Settlement Portals

Tell Us What You Think About (In Concept) Rares

etc, etc, etc.... you get the idea.

It would make reading the posts and providing feedback on specific subjects much easier, I think.

darknte

03-06-2004, 09:17 AM

I like all i see but, yes theres always a but, the settlement portal gems,
if we have to carry more stuff can we just remove the artifaces and get more packs??

if you want to nerf stuff or make things more even how but chars???
not to nerf chars because then ur saying for all your hard work (poof) do it all over again.
but when my bow char , skill 100lvls lower then my staffer , higher lvl and 100 skill pnts higher, can out hunt my staffer, where the love there,

all i have to say

Picasso2177

03-06-2004, 09:20 AM

I must say I am very impressed and pleased. Thank you for listening to us. I know I feel like you all are taking note of our wants and concerns. Thank you very much.

Madaster

03-06-2004, 09:26 AM

I'll admit to not having read all of what has been posted. My concerns with in development.

Removing inscriptions - unless a check is done to make sure that player is not still an active account this could be troublesome. Allowing a thief to get something uninscribed that shouldn't be. Even where the player that inscribed is no longer playing, the inscription could have great significance to someone that lost the item for some reason. It also in a way saddens me that some great history from the past will be lost. I can see both ends of this and I guess when push comes to shove you should be catering to who is paying you now, not who paid in the past.

Magic defense bonuses on weapons versus melee defense bonuses on orbs - hmmmmmm, I'm gonna have to rethink my template again. :) As long as the melee defense bonuses equal what magic defense does, all would be fair, however, magic takes a certain time to cast. In that casting time a melee can definitely get off at least two shots and more if they wish to drop power. So melee defense bonuses need to be somewhat higher to offset the power melees get via the magic defense bonus.

The other things look very interesting. Sadly, gems will be useless really in anything other than pvp. The shear number of debuffs cast by critters would make the use of gems to remove them both costly and a pain. Killing a set of undead in vod normally results in almost a full page of debuff removals afterwards. Gemming all those spells off isn't practical, neither would be casting them off for that matter.

Mr_Fred

03-06-2004, 09:31 AM

I definately like the idea of getting a lot of feedback from the players. I do think that this could be a slippery slope though.

For a time there, it felt like us, the players, were being bullied around....and finally we all know that you ARE listening.

I fear that turbine needs to make sure that THEY won't be bullied with things they will do to AC. I really do trust the developers to make the RIGHT choices in game, even though sometimes their way of thinking doesn't directly concern 90% of the population.

I'm concerned only because what if:

everyone on these boards said: "We want a AK-47" and everyone said they'd quit if they didn't have one....or some other preposterous item that would mess with what AC is all about....

Would the Devs be pushed into making an "ak-47" for everyone...would THEY find themselves bullied into doing something that would ruin OUR game?

Overall, love the changes and the ideas.

Tas

03-06-2004, 09:33 AM

I'm left to wonder if the amount of negative feedback from the combined XP Nerf, Subscription change, and loot nerf didn't force you to become more open, but WHATEVER the reason - as a long time player, I applaud the new communication you propose between player and dev.

I think THAT more than anything will generate a game that has the ability to last for a VERY long time.

Kala Bon

03-06-2004, 09:33 AM

1) The letter is a great step forward in the communication process.

2) Let us not forget how resilient AC is and the people that play the characters are.
We survive and thrive, and will find ways to play.
The only thing that sounds a little worrisome is the loss of precious pack space.

3)Personally, I want to say thank you Ibn.
I want to accept your apology and offer mine own in return for my whining.
You are hereby re-hired.
Kala Bon

Azzy

03-06-2004, 09:57 AM

Im not sure about your decision regarding the settlement portals :| I would hope that you will at least make them summon and not recall...

Evil Bert

03-06-2004, 10:01 AM

Elsinister

03-06-2004, 10:19 AM

I am happy about the defender/ melee defense to staves and wands etc, after all what is a bow but a staff with a string attached. I have played a mage with melee defense for a long time now, which is against the norm.
I am tank- war and have melee and war magic specialized, i put 100 in quickness to start , my current melee with majors buffs to 479 and i can evade devastators sometimes, defender should help this immensely. thx for that.
The housing portals being removed is a good idea, people have gotten too lazy to run anywhere in game. Maybe remove a few more portals.....
I also like the idea of shorter buff times...

Ziggy al-Zog Jr

03-06-2004, 10:21 AM

I hope that these boards and others like it will not be your only means of input. Just a guess on my part, but using my allegiance as an example, I would guess the majority of AC players dont visit these boards or others like it. And of those that do, the majority keep to themselves.

If these boards are your only form of input, you'll be encouraging the vocal minority, to be even more vocal. Again just my opinion, but the majority of the views expressed on these boards dont reflect the majority of AC players.

That said, I'm not sure what to think of some of the changes, but I like the format alot!!! Gives us a chance to see what you guys are working on, what your thinking of. And in turn gives us a chance to bring it up and discuss it, hopefully with your (Turbines) involvement, and to better understand some of the how's and why's. I like it. It makes me feel better about the future of the game, or at least that we (the players) will be involved in the discussions that effect the future of the game. And not just us going along as you introduce your vision of the game, every month, and us having to decided if this month is the month to unsubscribe or not. With hope we will be involved with the process, at a minimum on an informational basis, and be part of the discussion/decision about the game.

Enough from me, while I dont agree with some of the recent changes (chain nerf for one) I think I'll give you guys a few months to convince me your vision and mine are similar.

Angel lady - TD

03-06-2004, 10:22 AM

The settlement portals are useful for getting to places that are remote. Removing them will require long runs in order to get to those places (i.e. the far north end of Dereth or the Land Bridge area).

Because of the existence of the housing portals....many of the newer dungeons are unsummonable or untieable altogether.

If you are going to remove the settlement portals, please remove the barriers for tying to the dungeons, so that we can still get to our favorite hunting spots without having to carry an inventory of portal gems. Otherwise, many areas will be unreasonably hard to reach and dungeon camping nearer the towns will be a problem.

I really don't like the idea of losing the settlement portals, they made the game much more interesting. At least make the portal gems available in the towns that the settlements are linked to, and make them inexpensive....right now it costs nothing to go from Qalabar to the Land Bridge Villas. You are down-grading loot and then raising the cost of getting to hunting areas. Are you sure you don't work for the government?

Please consider the playability of the game, not just asthetics as you are making this change. The settlement portals may not be very attractive, but they significantly reduce tedium. Perhaps you can put them inside a structure or dungeon rather than removing them altogether (so each town has it's own subway).

cliser

03-06-2004, 10:32 AM

The new LttP format is brilliant.

The proposed changes unfortunately arent as good.

Firstly dispells.

The proposed change to dispel gems is disappointing. Yes (on reflection) they were overpowerred in the past but you have now revised content so that monsters cast a lot more vulns which was starting to make the gems a necessity not a luxury.

For example i did Harbinger last night. You have made some of the drops onto harm floors very nasty indeed. To do those jumps with vulns is suicide so I use dispell gems. In one instance when I used a gem it cleared -- 4 lines -- of vulns, mostly level 7s.
If you change the dispell system as described I would then need approximately 10 dispell potions/gems/casts just to acheive the same effect. In the mean time the mobs in there (which in most cases cant be killed) have restocked the vulns.

This could well make the H quest almost impossible to finish - not because you cant kill him but because you cant even reach him. And Harbinger is not an isolated case.
If you are going to balance (read nerf) gems then please bear in mind where those gems are required and do it in a abalanced way.

Secondly housing portals.

You are proposing several changes to various systems but they all have one underlying effect and that is to remove drudgery.
Quicker spell casts, fellow spells, proposed changes to banes - you name it - they all have that in mind.

Even the housing portals had that effect as they were a very good alternative to horses as used by other MMORPGs.

So it comes as a major surprise (and disappointment) that you now propose to revert the game back to a time when getting from A to B was a major pain in the ass.

People explore the game when they want to. They also pick what area they want to explore and they get there as quickly as they can (99% of the time using housing portals).

To remove that function and make me run 30km just to reach where I want to explore is a hindrance to me exploring not a bonus.

If the housing portals are so ugly then replace them with a vendor as you suggested, but dont put the vendor at the housing locations. Put them where the housing portals currently are. And let the vendor sells gems for each of the portals that used to be there.

That way people could still explore as they want. They could still get from A to B relatively free of drudgery and still enjoy the experience.

Looking back to the old 'pre housing' methods of getting around doesnt bring any 'golden memories' at all.

Going to the housing locations to buy gems is not an option either. Yes it will help with 5-6 popular locations but thats about it. It would then make any exploring/travelling pre-meditated and remove any spontenaity.

Why would I run somewhere and buy gems just in case 'I might want to go back'. It wont happen.

It wont get people in to town either, they will just stay at the mansions, MP or if bored (and cant face the run to get anywhere) they will just log off and go play something with a decent transport system in it.

My two pence.

Alissa

03-06-2004, 10:54 AM

Sorry just getting back, I mean move the statue/pillars that mark the housing portals closer to town or into them and when you click on the statue/pillar it lists the settlements it can send you to. Click on the settlement and off you go.

Like the recall gems to AL and Knorr.

Angel lady - TD

03-06-2004, 11:11 AM

I do not pk. I have no interest in PvP play. So this is not about any of the proposed changes as they don't affect me.

I do have a few requests though. There are PvP arenas available and just about anywhere in Dereth for these people to play. Please make certain spots off-limits to PvP. There are those of us that find the idea of killing other people for sport to be appauling and in bad taste. Marketplace and subway are not suitable venues for it. Also, can you consider making a completely Non-pk server? Pk's have Darktide....How about one for Non-pk's who prefer to stay that way.

JJC

03-06-2004, 11:18 AM

> You pay what maybe 6-8 creds to spec Arcane Lore?

How many credits does someone have to pay to get buffed by a patron, passer-by or bot? If it becomes an almost instant buff for mages one of the drawbacks to casting, specifically the downtime for the power, becomes nonexistant.

Self 7's and multibane item spells will only encourage casting. This fully buffed, fully baned character which is all but here already with macros will only push people into playing mages or going to bots because the content demands them to be fully buffed and baned.

> Lets not forget the main reason for 7s were to be a spell a little bit stronger then 6s but lasted ALOT longer.

We can forget it because it's wrong. 7's are a full school better than 6's much like 2's are a full school better than 1's. They don't last alot longer either. The 15 minutes is what the level boost was back when there was a difference between most schools. There is nothing special about 7's that can't be said about any other level of magic except they are denied to anyone who doesn't want to play a mage or visit a buffbot.

--

> Now once you get to the higher end of levels, you will need to rethink your skills if you ever want to hunt anything besides monkeys and bugs, but you CAN do it...

Which translates into being a mage to play at the high levels. As I said, they can't be honest about solo play at the high levels for a non caster until they put 7's on loot generated items.

--

> Thats what I am saying. For the cost of arcane as opposed to life and creature speced people playing purely arcane based creatures dont deserve level 7s on arcane items. maybe a quest item here and there, those 3 rings that came out were not bad

Do characters who don't train armor tinkering deserve the protection that it provides? Do characters who don't train weapon tinkering don't deserve the power that provides? Do characters who don't train alchemy don't deserve the power that alchemy provides? If what you are saying is true then all of those have to be true as well.

Besides, a lore based character did spend experience on a magic skill. That skill allows them to buff fully based on the items they find. There is no reason that they shouldn't be allowed to buff to the level that the design of the game expects them to. Allowing them to reach that point puts them on the same level as the monsters that they face and those who stop at a bot every hour.

JJC

Mithan

03-06-2004, 11:19 AM

Thanks for the Letter, this was a great step forward I believe.

The only disappointing part of it is that no mention of the new server and Graphics expansion pack was made. It has been almost 2 months since those were announced, so it would be nice to see some update on them soon.

Ziggy al-Zog Jr

03-06-2004, 11:24 AM

A thought, if the settlement portals are ugly, which IMO there not, why not just move them to the meeting halls. No one uses the meeting halls anyways. I dont think removing them is a good idea, your doing and have done a number of things to make life easier, less tedious, and now your going to remove something that eliminates a great deal of running? Running has got to be the most tedious aspect of the game, second to buffing.

Disgruntled

03-06-2004, 11:32 AM

I think the new format for the LTTP is good, but forgive me if I am still skeptical.
Most everyone on here is giving praise, congratulations, etc... only 1 week after moaning and complaining about the Feb patch sucking. It doesnt make sense, what has Turbine done? They put out a list of things that "may" happen in the next 3 months? Great, but the fact is, this month still sucks. I understand that this post is for feedback on the follow up LTTP but it is all tied in with what is going on now.
I just think it is funny that we can go from complaining about a patch that was a terrible idea, to praising Turbine for things that aren't even done yet!

I do like what the letter had to say and it is a good start to opening up the communication lines, but I have been disappointed before with what they have promised, so I will keep my praise for Turbine in check until they follow through with some of these great ideas.
I also suggest that people don't get their hopes up too high so when things don't happen quite as expected they won't be as disappointed, and if it does go as expected, then we will be all that much happier! : )

Skeptical AC Customer

Jobarrotan

03-06-2004, 11:43 AM

Great, Thank you much Turbine, you have cleared my thought of leaving the game and actually am looking forward to staying now, there is several promising changes that although may not be liked now, will be in the future when the over all game is complete! Can we say Ac1 with Ac2 game play thats all it is, I personally loved ac2 just its was always down and had several problems that just wasnt mu cup of tea. Nice Job turbine very thrilled!!!:p

Kaillus

03-06-2004, 12:25 PM

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE HOUSING PORTALS!

The housing portals were a god send for traveling around the world.

I was thinking the same thing that Ziggy was, move them to the Meeting Halls rather than remove them completely.

Housing portals are one of the greatest things in AC.

Pigroast

03-06-2004, 12:36 PM

I think the best solution to the housing issue, is to ban sales of ac related material on ebay.

Kyayote

03-06-2004, 01:04 PM

Please don't get rid of them Please. If they are so ugly put them in a building like the town hall.
I have a second account tied to my housing Settlement portal will he loose his tie?
I think that most of are limited on the time we can actually spend playing this game. Taking those portals out is adding more time consuming.
Not Good.
The other things in concept look
ok to me.
This is very nice to be able to post my opinion also.
Thank You,
Kya

Delight

03-06-2004, 01:15 PM

Settlement Portals
For some time, the Settlement Portal Hubs have been found outside almost all of the towns and cities of Dereth. These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly.

To me the main words here are "fast transportation ALL across Dereth". Our monarchy quests A LOT. We use these portals as a quick route to get to the dungeons for these quests. Removing them will hinder travel for alot of people. But I agree, they are ugly and create a lot of lag in the areas that they are in.

In April, we are planning to introduce the first phase of a two-phase process to remove the Settlement Portals. The first phase is the creation of portal summoning gems for all of the Settlements that are currently linked to the Hubs. Each Settlement will have a vendor who will sell that Settlement’s gem.

Phase one: Great, the idea of gems is wonderful!!! Yes, they need to be summoning gems for the sake of everyone going on a quest would need to have their own separate gem if done other wise. No different then the Master Mage gems really. They are WAY out of the way so we have gems to get to them. Why not have the summoning gems for the housing areas too?
What I dislike is making the Settlements have the person selling the gem instead of a person at each settlement statue (which should be put in town to draw people to the towns) is that once again people using them for quests will not have the ability to use the shortcuts unless someone runs and buys gems for everyone. Quests are sometimes a spur of the moment "lets go do this today" type of event. Making it so you have to run all over Dereth to get people to a certain area so they can go on the quest ruins the spontaneity of these types of gatherings.

The second phase, currently planned for May, is the removal of the Settlement Portal Hubs entirely.

Weeee we can get rid of some lag!!!!

The goal of these changes is to remove the ugliness of the Hubs, as well as encourage exploration and travel through Dereth’s wilderness.

I'm sorry if you think this will encourage travel and exploration. What it will cause is dungeons not being used because people have no easy way of getting there. If you polled the population you would see that we don't all have hours in which to spend our time running from point A to point B. Most people I know only play a few hours every few days ( I have been playing for 4 years I know alot of people ;))What level 20 can actually run all the way to the settlement closest to the train/untrain Temples so they can have a gem to get back easier in 2 weeks? Let alone run to the Temples themselves?? What about the G-man quests? These have Settlements close to them also, are we to expected to buy gems to get our whole fellowship there?

If there are several Settlements that you visit regularly, you have the opportunity to purchase gems for these Settlements in the month of April, before the Hubs are removed. If you wish to visit your friend’s home, you can ask you friend to purchase that Settlement’s gem for you. We would not be surprised to see gems for particularly popular Settlement destinations being traded in the Marketplace!

So, are we gaining packs to hold all these gems we will have to carry in order to get anywhere in Dereth? In order to have the time to do a quest I will have to make the time to go get gems?

What about those of us that don't wish to pay Plats and Sings in the marketplace? Not all of use are Sing or Plat rich. Not all of us even use the MP. You want to encourage alot of new people to play your game but your are going to make it harder for the true new people comming in to get anything or go anywhere.

I am truely baffled by this plan and wish you take into account ALL the facts not just the uglyness of portals but the need to cater to all the people that play this wonderful game that has become a part of our lives :)
Just my 2 P's on something very near and dear to alot of your players.

Kaillus

03-06-2004, 01:29 PM

Originally posted by EyeCandie
Settlement Portals
For some time, the Settlement Portal Hubs have been found outside almost all of the towns and cities of Dereth. These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly.

To me the main words here are "fast transportation ALL across Dereth". Our monarchy quests A LOT. We use these portals as a quick route to get to the dungeons for these quests. Removing them will hinder travel for alot of people. But I agree, they are ugly and create a lot of lag in the areas that they are in.

In April, we are planning to introduce the first phase of a two-phase process to remove the Settlement Portals. The first phase is the creation of portal summoning gems for all of the Settlements that are currently linked to the Hubs. Each Settlement will have a vendor who will sell that Settlement’s gem.

Phase one: Great, the idea of gems is wonderful!!! Yes, they need to be summoning gems for the sake of everyone going on a quest would need to have their own separate gem if done other wise. No different then the Master Mage gems really. They are WAY out of the way so we have gems to get to them. Why not have the summoning gems for the housing areas too?
What I dislike is making the Settlements have the person selling the gem instead of a person at each settlement statue (which should be put in town to draw people to the towns) is that once again people using them for quests will not have the ability to use the shortcuts unless someone runs and buys gems for everyone. Quests are sometimes a spur of the moment "lets go do this today" type of event. Making it so you have to run all over Dereth to get people to a certain area so they can go on the quest ruins the spontaneity of these types of gatherings.

The second phase, currently planned for May, is the removal of the Settlement Portal Hubs entirely.

Weeee we can get rid of some lag!!!!

The goal of these changes is to remove the ugliness of the Hubs, as well as encourage exploration and travel through Dereth’s wilderness.

I'm sorry if you think this will encourage travel and exploration. What it will cause is dungeons not being used because people have no easy way of getting there. If you polled the population you would see that we don't all have hours in which to spend our time running from point A to point B. Most people I know only play a few hours every few days ( I have been playing for 4 years I know alot of people ;))What level 20 can actually run all the way to the settlement closest to the train/untrain Temples so they can have a gem to get back easier in 2 weeks? Let alone run to the Temples themselves?? What about the G-man quests? These have Settlements close to them also, are we to expected to buy gems to get our whole fellowship there?

If there are several Settlements that you visit regularly, you have the opportunity to purchase gems for these Settlements in the month of April, before the Hubs are removed. If you wish to visit your friend’s home, you can ask you friend to purchase that Settlement’s gem for you. We would not be surprised to see gems for particularly popular Settlement destinations being traded in the Marketplace!

So, are we gaining packs to hold all these gems we will have to carry in order to get anywhere in Dereth? In order to have the time to do a quest I will have to make the time to go get gems?

What about those of us that don't wish to pay Plats and Sings in the marketplace? Not all of use are Sing or Plat rich. Not all of us even use the MP. You want to encourage alot of new people to play your game but your are going to make it harder for the true new people comming in to get anything or go anywhere.

I am truely baffled by this plan and wish you take into account ALL the facts not just the uglyness of portals but the need to cater to all the people that play this wonderful game that has become a part of our lives :)
Just my 2 P's on something very near and dear to alot of your players.

What are you talking about? What lag? I have never heard of any lag associated with the settlement portals, and I have never experianced it myself. Are there any server statisitcs to prove they cause lag?

Removing the settlement portals hurt this game more than help.

Trekman

03-06-2004, 01:34 PM

Dear Ibn - I am very disappointed with the way you want to deal with Hubs. Not necessarily because I need them by all means, but because of your argumentation. Frankly - it is very poor.

First excuse : "Because they are ugly..."

What about Subway ? Jungle Subway ?

They are very similar to a Hub : a set of portals in a very small area. The portals look the same - so they are ugly too. Soooo - when will you remove Subway and Jungle Subway ?

Ok - so there is one limited area outside every town with some portals. It's not like the Hubs are spread over all the landscape - if you are not specifically searching for one you most likely will never see one. Now you say you have to remove them because they are "ugly" ???

If the visual presentation is not satisfactory, spice it up. Let your artists create new animations/textures....if they really are ugly, make them look better, don't remove them.

To suddenly remove something that has been available for months/years *just* because "it is ugly" is somehow - well - worth being flamed at.

If a few players want them to be removed because they are ugly - why won't those players just ignore the Hubs - so they are not affected by the bad looks - and run all the way ?

The second excuse - "to enforce exploring" is also rediculous, or lets say unrealistic.

What part of "running through the landscape to a certain meeting-point or quest dungeon" can be changed to "exploring" by removing the hubs ?
For instance - how many people on AL running to the various Tusker dungeons are actually "exploring" AL ?
I do not demand an "AL Hub", but I hope you see my point.

If I want to explore, I explore. I do not have a specific destination, I run around and won't use a Hub.

But if I am running to a certain destination I do not care about exploring, whether there are Hubs or not. Running all the way like in the old days is not exploring, it is tedious.

If I have to bear such tedium I am willing to do so, but only for some *really* good reasons. "Ugly" and "exploring" are not such reasons.

And finally : the excuse "it reduces lag" (as stated by some players)

Lets see : a portal is a static thing that occupies as bit of space in a database. Furthermore it needs some server resources, especially the code to transport the player. The player using a portal triggers exactly one coordinate/landblock change in the server.

Now lets see : one player running permanently by either pressing "forward" (hence sending keypresses all the time) or by autorunning.
Both need constant coordinate transfers from server to client and constant book-keeping of the player's current coordinates and direction, landblock changes, monsters reacting when the player comes into view/aggro-range,....

So if you compare all those portals to all those players running around - what will produce more lag ?

Again - I do not need Hubs by all means. They are a convenience like many other things that were not available when I started playing AC1.
But this new idea to replace them by some gems - and especially the excuses to do so - let me simply shake my head in disbelief once more....

ficher

03-06-2004, 01:42 PM

Wow, lots of stuff to digest at once.

What jumped in my mind in my first read is this:

1. Revamping the Islands. I remember the big attraction Marre Lassel was when it was first introduced. I also remember the huge attraction of monkey island, asheron's island, and finally, revamped Caul. The huge attraction to Aerlinthe besides the quest was uber xp's in a very small area (if you could survive). The islands i think should continue to carry this tradition. Make the islands High level playgrounds. The mainland has always had enough content to level my babies and the islands gave me something to dream about.

2. Housing: Move mansions to the towns. Not in them, but just outside of them. Two reasons, wouldn't have to portal to them, just run; and most players congregate around mansions these days instead of towns.

3. Settlement portals: While I agree that they're ugly, i think a little creativity is in order. Keeping them slows down the server, removing them slows down the game. I understand the desire to have people "explore". But when you're having to run for an hour to get to the Chorozite vendor for the 5th time, exploring has lost its appeal.

4. And last(for this note anyway) is the Veyasen Isles. First, move the new sub, wedding chapel and Sanctuary out of the way.
Then: Pretend its Yaraq and turn it into a smoldering ruin. Want to see how attractive a low level island is, look no further than the Veyasens. Its pretty, but there are much better places to fight. And since I see no way to make it worth the effort, blow it to smithereens.

Signed:
Lightnin/Ficher
Can't fight the Smite!

Nya13

03-06-2004, 01:48 PM

In April, we are planning to introduce the first phase of a two-phase process to remove the Settlement Portals. The first phase is the creation of portal summoning gems for all of the Settlements that are currently linked to the Hubs. Each Settlement will have a vendor who will sell that Settlement’s gem.

making a vendor in the middle of town won't work.
People will wear a lot of gems on them to travel and wont need anymore to run to seetlements hubs to get the tie "portal recall" like now.

Why i think turbine idea is good :

0) In the past when i started this game 4 years ago!
My chars leveled in the big Glenden Wood (not the town)
I had to run and explored the area!
and i am remebering how it was exciting when i ran/moved to Nedisath castle from Gleden Wood when my char was level 20 because Lot of monsters were on my way and could kill me.

Since we got a lot of Portal Recalls add Seettlements hubs.
There are places where more persons do not pass there now.

1) for NON PK :

Questing :
You will have to use the Old Mine Subway or Jungle Subway to travel if you missed a "portal recall tie".

Buying cottages :
If you are looking for a cottages far away from towns ( in the middle of nowhere) It's logical that should be harder to get there (you will have to run a little).

2) for PK :

If Barriers cottages will be removed
making a vendor in town to sells the "portal summoning gems" to cottages will not be good. Too easy way for PK to Raid this places

Darthmagus

03-06-2004, 02:05 PM

IBN, I really like everything in the letter and it has gotten me extremely excited for the future of AC. I will definetly be staying! I still have one primary concern. I still suggest that turbine leave pvp alone. It is great now and one of my favorite parts of AC. I agree that other melee classes need to be brought up to speed, but it seems with all the changes being made to pvp that mages are still getting the short end of the stick. Right now Mage vs mage battles are all player pvp skill based. Perfect.

Mage vs archer... archers are underpowered slightly but as we read they are getting help there soon.

Archer vs melee (sword) Sword is WAY overpowered here

Mage bs melee (sword) sword is WAY overpowered here

Right now arrows are EASY to dodge... Your helping archers fix this problem with the upcomming patches.

All war magic is extremely easy to dodge. And now with the armor debuffing and the change of arc spell names it will be even easier. Mages need a way to fight back. Melees (mostly sword) are way to powerful against a mage. Considering that it costs SOOO many skill credits to train war magic and so many less to train melee skills I would think that war magic would be a little more usefull.

This statement can also apply to PvM. I have seen sword characters hit a creature in VOD for over 3000 pts on a critic while it is literally impossible to hit for anywhere near that much with a war magic spell. We need more firepower! If we have warmagic we shouldnt be pure support characters. Thanks IBN

A response to his post will be helpfull!

Bluefang

03-06-2004, 02:51 PM

Crafting Confirmation:
Much needed addtion for tinkers.
Would Alchemosts and cooks also fall under this?

Settlemet Ports:
Will these gems tell you the coords they will send you to if you identify them?
Be nice to carry a few more portal methods for sure. Can the Gems of the same destination e stackable? Such as stack maybe 5 or 10?

Towns:
Would it be possible to add NPC Tinkers? That way the market would not call for outrageous payments.

A bonus of tinkers, etc in town would be nice too.
Might open the door to a whole new economy maybe and make more tinkers available to many more.

Vendor buy/sell rates:
Yes does need adjusted. I liked how to sell at 100% at candeth keep was implemented. You had to do a quest for the keep to be able to use those vendors.

Dispell Revisions:
Much, much, needed. At high levels, you are constantly bombarded by levle 6's and 7's. Constant use of dispell gems got expensive. Being able to make potions and gems would be cool. Hopfully stackable to some degree such as at least 5-10 and burden not to high.

Buffing improvements:
What can you say. Anything that helps is great. Banes, Banes, Banes is the most needed improvements.

Plus returning base Mana Conversion that is not trained to still
have a base value based on self and focus. A base of 0 if not trained makes buffing impossible.

House Purchase:
Much better idea than the 24 hour timer.

Treasure changes:
Much, much needed. Feb updates to treasure really stunk.
During the whole patch, have not found anything worth keeping.
Have not found one minor or major yet. Went thru over 30 sings and most of the loot that came out of the troves was not even worth selling.

Fellowship Spells:
Cool idea. Hope that lets random is not tooo randdom. Such as I cast 2 attrib spells and each one does three spells. 1st does Str, end, coord. Hope that the 2nd one does not repeat one of
the first 3, but buffs 3 different ones.

Content Revsions:
Many quests/items need revised, but also need to have newer content also. How about adding more content in areas seldom used?

Another thought on this, is how about using redirection and when go thru a certain portals to quests/places, they route you ove rto another server. Could be used to cut down on real laggy
worlds by moving off some of the constantly used places that seen to use alot of resources.

An example might be Arelinthe, ML, AL, etc. or perhaps even down my by quests and places themselves.

New Armor:
Making more two piece suits would also help cut down on buffing. Main reason most people use amuli or robes. Constant drop of **** armor off high levels is a definete improvement.

Rares:
I like the idea. Maybe some duplicate items etc, but not 1/2 the world would have the same items. Be good for trade and economy I would think. Something to get economy off being sing based is also needed.

Allegiance improvements:
Always Welcomed. More control over allegiance chat would be nice. Also the ability to change your chat colors without relying on plugins would be nice also.

Jojii's font was a sweet idea. Not real powerful, but with a 2 hour timer is well worth it.

Last few updates have had some real cool looking house items. The Font, Living Tomb, Snow Flake, etc...

PvP:
Careless, not a pvp.

Web Integegration:
Sweet. May open door to hacks posibly also. How about ELIMINATION of having to have ZONE FRIENDS installed and running. Half the time it takes forever to get it to login and it causes lag bad at times.

Don't mind having to sign into the .net login, but get rid of that ARCHIC Zone software.

All in all, many of the changes sound good and feasible. I really like this communications attempt to get players involved also.

Tolliver

03-06-2004, 02:58 PM

Put the portal in the meeting halls. No one uses them for anything now. Each town has a meeting hall and the portals could be in there.

Or..

Set up a single portal in a town like the residence portal and put the settlement portals inside.

LeifThorssonJr

03-06-2004, 03:19 PM

i think the new information system is great!!! keep up the good work.

it is nice to know that what we say has an impact on how the game will turn out.

this is probably the best thing that has ever happened to the game.

as for people commenting on the changes, there are specific threads devoted to the actual changes, use them.

archer of sjet

03-06-2004, 03:25 PM

Ibn, have you thought about moving the portal hubs inside the meeting halls?

Revive interest in the halls and reduce lag outside, then if people want to use a portal they will use the hall. Beside it will give the design team to redesign meetings halls to their former glory.

Please consider this as an option before you make more stupid decisions that are hurting the future of AC.

Shevali

03-06-2004, 03:32 PM

Moving them or modifying them would be better. For people who have an hour or so to play and don't have time to search tradebots or run around looking for gems at different spots for their group, it would be better. I work, and so does a lot of people who play this game, and to get a free hour or so a day is golden, it would just be tarnished to have to spend it running everywhere instead of getting into some action.

gaandar

03-06-2004, 03:44 PM

Put a portal in Marketplace to a "real" subway. In the subway, put ALL of the settlement portal groups in different rooms. Include a portal in the room to the original settlement portal location.

This would provide the quick access to Dereth that people want.

xarfet

03-06-2004, 03:53 PM

as many others who have posted, i dont think that removing the settlement portals is all that good of an idea, especially for the reasons listed.

while i dont like how they are currently placed on the landscape (all bunched up, making it possible to hit the 'wrong' one, ect) you could place a hedge/wall between them so you need to walk into the right one, or something...

if thats not possible/feasable, (similar to placing them in the meetin halls) why not put them in their own small rooms, accessed by using the "Settlement Portals" statue/pole? that way they are off the landscape (ugliness/'lag' problems), and ONLY accessable if you want to get there.

if you MUST get rid of them, having gems available for only 1 month wont be usefull at all, since the supply will be FAR too limited to be usefull for more than a couple months (maybe more to severe rationing?) having them sold at the SETTELMENT will keep many people from spending the time to run out there to collect the gem(s) they want (in which case they could buy them from others, as you imagine people will be doing anyway), and it would still be part of quest preperation to collect the needed gems to help, unless the dungeon is summonable... inwhich case the settlement would ony get the tie-er there faster

*edit* other posts werent up before i started on this, so sry about that. i like the letter alot tho! :)

KF_AC

03-06-2004, 04:05 PM

Overall I find the changes well thought of.

The Settlement Portals as well as anything encouraging the "Mule" culture in AC needs to go.

While obviously some players subscribed to the game to become mules or traders, it is not the game's purpose, atleast not what the box says.

Stop catering for everybody, keep the game pure, inline with the original concept.

That said, the "armor debuffs" will present problems you may not have well studied. Group combat will totally change in pvp. Whether it will be fun remains to be seen.

Self buffing speed as well as grouping buff spells are great ideas that we need in game asap.

Dispel VII spells were well overdue, thanks for bringing them in.

I don't well understand the Dispel potions idea though. Nerfing gems while adding potions, what difference does that make?
Dispels are too powerful, they need to require "skill", not just double clicking an item.

But overall, I find these changes great. Thanks for listening to your playerbase.

YoshotheGrand

03-06-2004, 04:58 PM

Everything sounds good except the changing of the settlement portals, which absolutely infuriates me.

Settlement portals are a great way of getting around, especially in the north, where towns are few. So many quests revolve around using the portals, I hate to see them go. And how are they ugly? They're just a bunch of portals. Having to go and buy an expensive gem every time I want to go somewhere is stupidity. I don't have 50000 MMD notes to spend freely, and if I want to go anywhere, that means I grow closer to bankruptcy. And what about house availibility? The portals are also super convienient. I don't have much time to play each day, and when I do get on, I want to be able to do something productive, not have to spend half my time running to someplace. Gems will encourage those who buy and sell houses for real cash even more, even if there is a 1 month timer. A house will become availble, and now, all the person has to do is pop a gem and they're instantly there and can buy the house in under a minute. Its unfair to people like myself who won't be carrying 50 gems around with them but still want a cottage. In short, KEEP THE SETTLEMENT PORTALS!!!

Scorpogee

03-06-2004, 05:23 PM

Everything I've read so far is great. One thing that I would like to request is when making the new potions to have the town vendors sell the raw chorzite. You would think by now that our Lugian friends would open a market for mined chorzite in towns.

It's really incrediable that crafters still must run to the mines to get the different grades of raw chorzite.

nofeir

03-06-2004, 05:24 PM

It’s very good that you are finally “coming clean” with your player base and telling us in advance what changes you’re thinking of making. It’s even better that you’re doing so soon enough for our feedback to have an effect on your thoughts before they get “set in cement”. Thank you for this welcome change in your communications process.

The options you’re adding in the Character Options panel look great to me, as far as they go. I’d like to see another single piece of information, at the least, related to your xp pass up percentage. More information about how this number is derived would also help individual payers fine tune this important parameter.

The Crafting Confirmation dialog is a welcome addition. Now, if we only had a way for crafters to acquire points so their skills can advance then this important skill set wouldn’t be dependant on having a vassal actually play so the crafter can go up in level. Crafting has been made important over time in AC yet it is the only character type that cannot self level. Yes, you can make a “fighting crafter”, but they are a compromise at best. A true crafts person won’t have skill credits or experience points to put into fighting skills if they are to be really good at the crafting trades.

Removing Settlement Portals would be a huge detriment to travel, in my opinion. It’s so nice to be able to just go run into the portal to go to a particular settlement. If I understand correctly, what you propose is that a player who wants to go to Settlement X would have to first RUN to Settlement X and buy a gem which would take him to (drum roll please) Settlement X. This makes no sense at all. This just makes transportation much more difficult and is a bad idea. Why not simply move settlement portals underground, or put them inside the town meeting halls, which are largely unused now anyway? Perhaps settlement portals could be placed inside the residential halls in each town where they are now. Make them into signs you click on if the portals themselves take up too much space. (If you’re determined to go the gem route, at least make them readily available in the town near where the portals exist now, or put a vendor for gems either in the town or at the present portal farm location instead of AT the settlement.) I for one could care less that some think the portal farms are “ugly”. They provide a needed service. Pretty them up, or move them inside, but please don’t remove this great travel aid and please don’t make us run to each settlement for a gem!

By “adjust the vendor buy-sell rates” do you mean that once again some vendors will pay more for certain items? If so, then I think that’s good. If you’re going to make them pay less or charge a lot more for what you buy, then I’m not so happy. Please explain exactly what you mean.

You’re correct when you say the dispel gems are powerful. However, if you’re going to make high level spells and potions that remove a “random” number of negative spells, then that random number should not be ONE! Start with say, four spells and go up. They are level VII’s and SHOULD be powerful. I’d hate to burn a plat and only dispel one spell from the boatload I have on, and then find out that it was a meaningless debuff anyway.

The house purchase timer may, or may not serve to halt the commercial trade in AC housing. Each account only costs $12.95 per month, and has a potential of making much more than that on the sale of just the one house (villa, mansion) per month that you would restrict each account to purchasing. So, they can still make more real life money than it costs to maintain the account. On the other hand, I would not like to see you so severely restrict the purchase of housing as to hamper the legitimate purchase of a house by players in the game. After you have a "house" of whatever type, I have a hard time understanding why you'd need another one in less than 30 days, or even 60 or 90 days. It’s a tough problem. A longer timer, perhaps, would discourage this trade more. How many houses do you need, anyway! Maybe someone who "lost" a mansion because they lost rank or couldn't keep up the maintenance could be allowed to buy a smaller house sooner.

Upcoming changes to the treasure system sound good. I do hope, however, that you will be putting BACK the low weight, high value loot items that have recently become extinct. Under the current xp pass up rules, having a large “disposable” cash pool is one of the few ways we can help our trade crafters increase their skills by gambling for trophies.

Town improvements sound interesting, especially the “crafting bonus” you mentioned. Would this bonus help crafters across the board? Would it even make imbues just a bit more likely to succeed? Interesting! Can you give us any more details?

Overall, though, this represents a welcome improvement in communications.

rascal

03-06-2004, 05:25 PM

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

The removal of the housing portals is a really horrible idea.
This will make travel much, much more difficult and remove incentive to explore. I use dozens of settlement portals all the time to make travel easier. This is a huge crippling nerf, a major step backwards. :(

bule elf

03-06-2004, 05:35 PM

nothing can say
nothing need say

when you bring to player to start point. you must consider there have how many NEWBIE. with the change i will not request my friends join me. Maybe i will join with friends in other games.
LIKE:
FF
EQ2
WOW but not AC or AC2. or other Turbine games.

Good job :) turbine. Please add more nerf.
nerf spell. nerf buff other, nerf heal, nerf pyreal, nerf foci, nerf plats. (burn rate like crazy) nerf this, nerf that.

YOU guys doing very Well. GOOD JOB

LeifThorssonJr

03-06-2004, 05:55 PM

regarding the house timer....

good idea.

an even better idea would be to go on ebay, and look up villas for sale, and ban the account that currently owns the villa... of course, you might get people false posting villas for sale, to get others banned, but if more than one villa is offered by same guy on ebay, check the villas, if they are all on the same account, or more than one, then ban the account....

-Kaxak-

03-06-2004, 06:11 PM

Speed buffing very good idea :)

Debuffing armor is a very bad idea , and here's why

1) swords char casts armor debuff on an archer it lands , ok fine

2) Archer char casts armor debuff on sword char it hits the shield and will never land , ok very very very very bad idea here

Housing portals remove them ? NO !!! , who hunts around these portals anyway ? maybe a hand full at best , 95% of the server doesn't have a problem with them the other 5% use them too , I say KEEP the housing portals

one spell casting for item buffs , Very very very very GOOD idea :)

Removing level 1 s2H is a very very very very very bad idea , if it stays this way past one patch and isn't fixed to the way it was , I will quit the game and move too either w0w or Lineage

Ibn , if you really wanna find out what the players want POLES work great .... =) make it a vote , find out what the % is then make the choice to change things :)

zarry

03-06-2004, 06:31 PM

i think lot these changes are BAD and am not very happy !!!!
here are just a few examples::::

the removal of settlement portals because there ugly hmmm who said there ugly no one i know of .....

DT removal of house barriers .....good idea for who ? ohh yeah all the high lvl's ,sry this is super bad idea for the little guy

2 wrongs do not make a right ....i see way more bad then i see good here sry i do not like lot of this at all

Sabre-F86

03-06-2004, 06:47 PM

Originally posted by Reeve Sparticus
About the housing portals solution...

However I've come to realize lately that most players would probably rather see the housing portal gem vendors inside the towns. Each town's vendor would carry the portal gems to those settlements that are closest to that town.

This would have the following advantages:

1) Placing the vendors in towns would help players frequent towns more often. It's a general concensus that the towns are too empty right now, so this idea could help remedy that.

2) Placing the vendors in towns would help players maintain the freedom of travel they have already been granted with settlement portals on the landscape. Thus you're not taking anything away from the player. For example, right now if you want to travel somewhere you've never been to before to complete a one time quest, such as walking boots, you can get around pretty freely by going to a town and jumping into the nearby settlement portal that takes you close to your next stop. If the settlement portal gem vendors were placed in towns you could pretty much do the same thing.

3) Placing the vendors in towns would help players by reducing their pack space allocation toward settlement portal gems. Players would only keep on hand the gems to places they frequent often. Placing the gems vendors in the settlements would cause players to tie up a lot more space in their inventory which would be looked at as a disadvantage.

If nothing else, I think this is one area you might want to run a poll to get an opionion from the players where they'd like to see the settlement portal gem vendors placed.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Getting to the various towns is pretty easy.

Sabre-F86

03-06-2004, 06:54 PM

I keep reading comments about the lag caused by settlement portals. What is this? I have never experienced any lag in the area of a settlement portal. At least no more than any other portal including the login portal. What lag is every on about?

Sun Set Sam

03-06-2004, 07:06 PM

I am not sure I like the idea of losing the settlement portals, but if you do, and use settlement gems why not limit the number of different settlement portal gems one can carry. I would make them stackable to 20 or so of the same settlement gem but have a maximun of 5 or 10 different settlement gems one could carry at one time. This would greatly hinder the Villa e-bay sellers and give the average Joe a chance to get his villa.

My 2 cents

Hunter

03-06-2004, 07:11 PM

I like alot of what is proposed,..

though im heavily against removing the housing portals, as transportation is dereth is,.. lets say subpar without them

There is abolsuly no fun in running for an hour to do a quest, with it can be reduced to a 15 min run via housing....

Perhaps instead of removing the portals, you place them in meeting halls. This would remove them from the landscape and place them convenatly to towns

Not to mention i have a nagging feeling your going to make gems expensive, and even 50k a pop would be a major burden for players who chose not to macro their money.

Nya13

03-06-2004, 07:37 PM

Originally posted by rascal
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

The removal of the housing portals is a really horrible idea.
This will make travel much, much more difficult and remove incentive to explore.

remove incentive to explore? lol

you will have to explore while atm all ur doing is taking shortcut and drop at destination.

boneyard

03-06-2004, 08:13 PM

explain this exploring to me please. what is the difference between running from a town to a dungeon and first going into a settlement portal close to the dungeon and then going to the dungeon?

Korihor

03-06-2004, 08:14 PM

Are the settlement gems a "use once" gem and then you have to get more of them? If so that is the pits. Plus gems are just one more thing taking up space in my pack. I don't need more junk in my pack. I don't see what this gains us other than to make the game look prettier??? Why don't you just put a nice looking post on the edge of a town with a cute button for each of the settlements that the portals go to. It would be clean and simple. What I also don't want to do, is go back to alot of running to get to places. I havn't got the time for it. The settlement portals have sure helped movement in the game. Lets not go to gems. That is a sucky idea. Thanks for the chance to comment.

Bruiserk

03-06-2004, 08:19 PM

I'm sure it's been said already(haven't read the replies), but thank you, thank you, thank you.

I don't think there's anyone that plays the game that doesn't appreciate this new effort to improve communication with your players.

I had always wondered why you wouldn't discuss changes in game mechanics with the players, since in most cases they are unrelated to content, and wouldn't ruin the fun of patch day.

Again, thank you.

Pigroast

03-06-2004, 08:22 PM

The letter:

"These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly."

orion's statement:

"Ultimately what this change boils down to is this. The portal hubs were never intended to make travel across Dereth too easy. We've found that this is exactly what happens. "

Why did the letter not state the actual reason?

jfilip112

03-06-2004, 08:30 PM

I like housing portals and never thought they were ugly. Personally I think they should stay in game how they are. They at least make you travel to that town before you can use them, which makes people travel to towns a little bit more; even if it is a small amount. On the subject of making item buffs one spell: I don't believe this is the greatest idea. I like the fact of creature and life taking lvl 1 time, but part of the strategy of PvPing as a melee/archer is seeing if a character is not baned to a certain type of damage. I for one like the fact that one should be rewarded for spending more time baning and casting item spells. So like you stated before, please do proceed carefully when dealing with changes to item enchantment.

Sprawl

03-06-2004, 08:32 PM

This is awesome for people like me that are very interested in all the phases of the game, however I'm sure many will complain you are handing us the game on a platter.

Sprawl

Atticus Finch

03-06-2004, 08:55 PM

I think the rares and the allegiance modifications sound absolutely wonderful!

You guys are doing wonderfully.

Kylene

03-06-2004, 09:16 PM

Thank you for taking time in writing that out for the players. I deffinately think that was needed. It has my interest peaked once again.

This has cleared up many unanswered questions.

Kala Bon

03-06-2004, 09:31 PM

I am an old timer guy. I run a lot of places still, and people just shake their heads sometimes. You can go here and take this, and then run there and do that, etc,,,
My style is that I run. Not everywhere, but if I gotta take 3 portal hops to get somewhere and I can run there in my own fashion and get there within like 5 or 10 minutes of the "short-cutted" route, then I run.
Quit stealing my style.
Now everyone is gonna be just like me.
Let them be them, and me be me, is what I am trying to convey.
Ok, so ya want them to be like me.
Where is my reward for doing it the"right way" for so long ?
*grumble grumble*
It seems like you are stealing something from me .
Oh, and hi there.
Good hunting
Kala Bon

Renswic

03-06-2004, 10:26 PM

i love the upcoming changes and look forword to them, thou i do have a couple thoughts/ideas to throw in the pot

1. houses, villas and cottages, need to be able to use all or at least more of they hooks they have, i constenalty have to change stuffs around to show off my favorite quest items, my collection of quest bows and other misc houseing items. The abbility to change what way the hooks face would be nice too

2. horses, or mounts for us AC2 vets, these would be a great update to AC when the exp. pack comes out. why? with the removial of houseing portals things will be slower moving around for quest, hunting, and exploring

3. (this one is somthing i want) custem titles would be fun to run around with a title that no one else has

other then that AC is running towords a great new future and i eagerly await the changes

MissMae

03-06-2004, 11:25 PM

That's what I think.

You guys get better all the time. I hope most of your customers have the patience to see your vision through to the end and what I think will be a wonderful playing field.

Thank you Turbine.

Rick9719

03-06-2004, 11:45 PM

You're going to remove the settlement portals because they're ugly?!?!?! Are you insane?!?!? You're making a major change in the game's transportation system because of astetics?!?!? Why not just change the looks of the portals?

What madmen are complaining about the availability of shortcuts? Is every quest in the game now going to take two extra hours slogging though the wilderness? This is always my least favorite part of any quest.

This is the worst idea I have ever heard. I think selling gems is a bad idea as A) it's temporary, and B) for those who have gems it's going to make for even bigger shortcuts (also not needed) as you just whip out the gem at your mansion. This is crazy. Stop. Do not do this.

-Rick

ShaRhee

03-06-2004, 11:51 PM

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't force me to run to a settlement to buy a portal gem that will portal me to...uh...where I just ran to, doh! That is one of the dumbest concepts I have ever heard. If you're trying to prevent people from buying up cottages and reselling them, do it some other way...this is NOT the answer.

I have never known anyone to complain about settlement portals being ugly. I've never thought of them as ugly. Now, virindi are ugly...are you going to remove them from the game too????? And how about those bandies??? Those are even worse!

If you're going to force us to use gems to get to housing settlements, make them summonable so you can take a group through it (I use settlement portals all the time for questing), and put the vendors in the nearest towns. Forcing people to run to the settlement to get a gem would greatly increase preparation time for a quest, and most quest leaders I know are extremely busy people. Forcing a whole questing group to run 30 or 40 clicks to get to a quest dungeon greatly increases the time of the quest, and with all the buffbot babies out there, they'll spend a buff running, hit the portal and have to recall to the mansion to get rebuffed (IF the dungeon is even recallable). STUPID STUPID STUPID!

If portal hubs cause lag, fine, I can accept it IF the lag is actually reduced when you're done. I would much rather see a marketplace-style hub complex with portals to all the housing settlements...or put them in a building somewhere near their current location...you can even make the building pretty for the jerks who complain about things being ugly.

/e walks away shaking her head.

P. S. The rest of the changes are great! I love them all except for one. I will not be using fellowship spells, and I wish you would not introduce them -- mages will always be expected to cast those spells. I will refuse to even learn them, TYVM!

Escanor

03-07-2004, 12:05 AM

A HUGE vote of NO to the settlement portal idea:

1. Running long distances to reach a destination is under the "been there done that" category for me. I do not want those days back in AC. Exploration is great, FORCED exploration is not at all fun.

2. Some smaller guilds (such as ours) use a person's villa or cottage as the centrail meeting location. This is NOT the monarch's home, so the recall command is not an option. There would be no practical way to reach these homes on a regular basis by any character; the use of gems would quickly become tedious; which character has a gem, which one you thought had one but didn't, etc.

On another matter: Turbine's poor communication has been one of my majoy concerns for the future of AC. I truly applaud the efforts to correct this, and I like the approach taken so far. Thanks a lot!

micahNEO

03-07-2004, 12:08 AM

Do not remove the settlement portals! If people are truly complaining b/c they are ugly, then why not create a Settlement Portal Hub? Perhaps make 1-3 Settlement Portal Hub "Dungeons" that can only be accessed via some sort of recall gem which can be made available via a vendor somewhere. This will keep the settlement portal concept in tact, but still remove them from the landscape.

I for one would have no problem paying for a Settlement Portal Hub Gem. If you really wanted to take it a step farther, make the gems "Portal Sending" gems v/s "Portal Summoning". That way only 1 person can use each gem. But whatever you do, don't take them away!

Also, I would LOVE to see some improvements for both Villa and Mansion owners. The once thought of "hookable portals" idea comes to mind in particular. I would like to see some kinda upgrade to villas as well :)

In relation to the buff system changes, how about set it up so that Item Enchantment spells are cast on your character and will then give each equiped item that spell's effect if applicable. For example, casting Brogard's Defiance would put Imp 7 on all your armor and Shield (if equipped) in one spell v/s casting it X number of times depending upon what armor type you were wearing.

Just a few thoughts. And I'm glad to see that Turbine is listening to player feedback so strongly. You guys are really putting forth a lot of effort to make AC better and I for one appreciate that greatly! Keep up the good work (and get the loot system fixed ASAP :p)

Ha!

Escanor

03-07-2004, 12:12 AM

Originally posted by Letter to the Players
You turned up your nose at a Kasrullah

Well, yes, but that's just because it's embarrasing to be seen wielding one of those! :D

nofeir

03-07-2004, 01:05 AM

I believe the stated reason for reducing the length of time it will take to cast level VII self spells is to encourage players to self buff. I also believe it would encourage players to self buff if the scrolls weren't so very difficult to get. Out of twenty or thirty SIK's I used on each of my last several trips to the chests, I got maybe one or two scrolls that were actually useful for self buffing. Most of the time you get scrolls to debuff your enemy's cooking skill or his item tinkering skill and, as if that weren't bad enough, you often get several of the SAME useless scroll. None of these "trash" scrolls will help you beat an enemy nor will they promote self buffing. Please make "useful" (self buffing) scrolls more readily available!

JJC

03-07-2004, 01:14 AM

> I believe the stated reason for reducing the length of time it will take to cast level VII self spells is to encourage players to self buff.

People don't use buff bots because it takes too long for them to self buff. They do it in part because they don't have the skills or don't want to play a mage.

Encourgaging folks to self buff is just one way force people into playing mages that otherwise wouldn't be playing mages. Since there is no way to buff as the content dictates with 7's without being a mage. People should be free to play a mage and buff as fast as possible. They should also be able not to play a mage and face the content at the level it was designed and that is done best by 7's on items.

JJC

sandman

03-07-2004, 06:51 AM

If the "real" reason to remove the housing hubs is because of the ease in traveling across Dereth, then I have an alternate solution.

The hubs for a particular town, say Holtburg, should lead only to settlements near Holtburg.. The exceptions would be the settlements not near any town, and those would be done by the closest town, even if it's not a town that's portal accessable.

Yinchi

03-07-2004, 06:55 AM

My thoughts on the settlement portals. I have played since beta... I know what it is to explore the land by running everywhere. I knew the loop for lower levels and used it.

But.... you have a new expansion pack and a new server coming out with new people on the horizons. HOW do they obtain a cottage at lower/mid levels??? A lot of the cottage routes are very dangerous without portals. This will surely limit the cottages to veterans of the game.

In the old days, running everywhere was fine, I could run to the matty caves at level 17, with the new distribution map, this is no longer possible.

I like the game to be a challenge, I like exploration, it is my favorite thing to do but you have cut back on the territory of the low/mid levels til there is very little exploration they can do by simply running. We must look to the future of AC, not just to the high levels who are here now (and I am a high level).

Updating old quest..... this is fine but what I see is "updating" means higher level critters. Again, think of the new people coming to the game.

Weezly

03-07-2004, 07:23 AM

The advance notice letter is great.

I do have a problem with the housing portals " Are the still going to be tieable? " I have multi accounts and where I live, it would be impossible to run my mules there.

Nya13

03-07-2004, 07:27 AM

Originally posted by sandman
If the "real" reason to remove the housing hubs is because of the ease in traveling across Dereth, then I have an alternate solution.

The hubs for a particular town, say Holtburg, should lead only to settlements near Holtburg.. The exceptions would be the settlements not near any town, and those would be done by the closest town, even if it's not a town that's portal accessable.

AYE iF YOU WONT REMOVE THE HUBS THEN CHANGE/REORGANIZE the transportation.

example : Like sandman said Settlements Hubs at Holtburgs should lead only to cottages near Holtburg.

Since start i didn't undertand why this settlements came in game. People use it more than Mine Subway and Jungle shadow to travel. There were some places in game that used to be a secret or hard to go and since yo introduced Hubs! Everybody can go there too easily.

just an example on DT : When blood guild was based at Mtn retreat and when you introced the Hubs this place became to easy to go and to raid.

There are not anymore a lifetones or places that can be keep secret or little populated like in the past because this places were hard to get.

PurEvil

03-07-2004, 07:38 AM

Most everything here I read was great... except two things, that have already been hit on.

Settlement Portals
I seriously doubt that you have gotten many complaints that they are "ugly". Laggy maybe. But for many of us, these portals have been a godsend. There was a time in this game where it was normal to have as much as a 90 minute run, for a 15 minute quest, unless there was a portal in the area, and someone still had to make that run for the group. The settlement portals give an alternative to us lazier players.

By taking them out, you are forcing us to make that run. There are still many times that I'll run to different places, just because of the critters in the area (such as stonehold from Neydisa, on account of sent shards and Hoaries.). But I think that choice should be left to the player. I think a better fix to this ugliness, would be found in a small dungeon perhaps, that you portal to, in order to get to the rest of the portals. Similar to the construct of apartments, or the subway.

Dispel Gems
I'm not a big gem user, and will typically stick it out if I have one or two debuffs on me. But saying that a gem won't eliminate *all* the current debuffs on us, means a lot. Let's say I'm running through a section of the landscape, and every critter that can, puts Imperil V on me. I could have about 30 overlaps of the same spell. Pop a gem. Still have 24. Pop a gem. Still have 22. Pop a gem. 20. And so on. In this case, I would have to use 10-15 gems just to get rid of a single spell.

I can understand why you would want to lower their effectiveness if you are going to be introducing gems that we can make. I think the better implementation for this would be, to first find a way for spells *not* to overlap. This would at least rule out my entire argument above. Second, would be to make it so that player made gems *do* wipe out all negetive spells. This would make them *much* more valuable. In this case, I would also rather them be stackable, but I think that would be pushing my luck :D

Samis

03-07-2004, 09:49 AM

Is there going to be a change for ranged weapons to include an attack bonus? I know the stats was on the weapons then removed since it didn't accually give archers a bonus to attack. Is there any plans to give the ranged combat weapons the attack bonus?

thomas144

03-07-2004, 10:09 AM

I tried reading the March letter because I had seen comments about how great it was. I have the same comment I always have with Turbine's "Letters":

It is overwritten, too wordy, long-winded, and doesn't get to the point. In a word, it is incomprehensible to me.

Just tell me what the changes to the game will be.

Many people who play Asheron's Call are not native speakers of English. I am a native speaker of English but I can't fathom the stuff that comes out of Turbine. I can't imagine that non-native speakers have any idea what the "March Letter" is all about.

jordvik

03-07-2004, 11:08 AM

We will generally roll with the punches as you (Turbine) well knows, however I strongly disagree with the removal of the settlement portals or at a bare minimum, their replacements (Gem Vendors)

As we understand it your reasoning is landscape uglyness (which sounds a little fishy to me). I propose instead of making gem vendors at the settlements, make the vendors in the cities that the portal rings are currently in. If I want to go to Dilli Butte settlement, what good is a gem seller IN the settlement. If Im already there, then there isnt much point. All it will do is make the quest leaders either drag their fellow across the landscape (which you will lose some people due to bad connections when making them run for 30 mins to a portal) or make the leaders go get all these gems before hand, decreasing the amount of people willing to lead these things anyway.

You are talking about instituting critter and life buffs at level 1 speeds, which will remove some of the monotony of buffing (a very good thing in my book), why would you make changes that make running such a chore? That seems to defeat the purpose to me. Players dont want to spend 45 minutes of their valuable in game time, running from one side of dereth to the other, just for the sake of doing it. Even if they did, they are more than welcome to do that now with the portals in place. This will cause the more casual player to think twice about his most recent increase in monthly dues and it will make an aspect of the world more monotonous, doing some damage to the already questionable value of questing (since most quest items are far outshined by loot items anyway).

Toxeus

03-07-2004, 11:09 AM

In April, we are planning to introduce the first phase of a two-phase process to remove the Settlement Portals. The first phase is the creation of portal summoning gems for all of the Settlements that are currently linked to the Hubs. Each Settlement will have a vendor who will sell that Settlement’s gem.

Are you crazy? For FOUR YEARS the developers have worked to make the game more fun, to remove the drudgery, and to increase the action of the game. Now with every patch you are reintroducing boredom to the game!! Why don't your remove bundled arrowheads, shafts, and component peas so that all the archers can go back to the "good old days" or put the old spell component system back in so we can have the old "fun" of buying comps all the time... Oh wait, you're going to put buffs back to 30 minutes?? I thought that was it!!

Why make the game more boring? I can certainly survive running to more places, but why should I???

In addition, to give each town some unique flavor, each town will have one or two vendors who have better buy/sell rates than the rest of the town.

I can't wait to see the exploiters who figure out a way to macro to make money off of the buy/sell rates! This was changed to reduce the players ability to generate a "trade gap" profit, and you are just reintroducing it!

Nya13

03-07-2004, 12:09 PM

Remove Hubs and add some new portals in game
or
add some new portals inside (or an other) Mine Subway and jungle shadow ... then.

Bardolan

03-07-2004, 01:01 PM

RE: The Settlement portal removal

As opposed to introduceing new vendors in every single settlement, why not add the gems to the inventory of the archmage at the town those portals are located near... it would significantly cut down on the work load faced by the development team and also allow players to maintain vesatility of thier transportation

Bardolan

03-07-2004, 01:23 PM

RE: Creature and Life Casting Changes

If I may offer a suggestion in addition to the changes you are already makeing. If you could add Beneficial Other spells to the list it would greatly ease the burden for patrons wishing to assist thier vassels on longer quests (eg. Aerlinthe Island, Knorr, Olthoi Queen, etc.).

And also the timeing of beneficial Item Enchantment spells could be taken note of. For my Typicall Hunting patterns I cast 6 item spells per peice of armor, more if I am planning to go PVP. On a typicall suit of Yoroi includeing an Asherons Rainment that constitutes 7 peices, so on average I cast between 42 and 56 spells, not to mention no fewer than 10 differnt casting foci as I have embraced the system of rending imbues... wich if I were an arch would be increased to 30 spells for full versatility.

Count that against 6 atributes, 14+/- Skills, 9 Life protections and 3 regeneration enhancements for a total of 32 spells

Keep up the good work and thanks for listening to my Kvetching about Logistics.

Bit O Honey

03-07-2004, 02:45 PM

ok ...if the only reason to take out the settlement portals is due to uglyness.why not put them in a building like a subway.

And i'm not sure i was reading letter right.. but are you guys saying only the gem to be sold in each settalment is only the gem to that settalment .Or all the gems to the settlments that were orig. in that cluster of settlement portals?if its just the one gem then thats just lame!! and why sell them in the settlements anyways? heh only good thing i see out of this is it will also be another way to make getting housing harder yet more fair.

Ryori

03-07-2004, 03:03 PM

First off, thank you for the expanded LTTP. This level of communication is something I have felt has been missing since AC2 came in (i.e. Dev Chats all but disappeared).

I like the %s for tinkering being available to us. I strongly encourage more of this type of thing (i.e. common web or decal programs being part of the client).

For the portals - how about this suggestion. Make a vendor in the TOWN have the gems. Thus the current Qal portals would be in Qal. This has two benefits - keeps the portals fairly simple to get too and gives us something new that is both useful and consumable in the towns (i.e. more town traffic). I do not agree that the portals hurt exploration - my use is typically on quests and running through areas where nothing can happen to me does not add to my game experience.

Again - good or bad on the points of Turbine's plans, I greatly appreciate seeing some of the plans written down. Before now I had felt we were being asked to buy company stock (i.e. hang in there) without knowing what the business plan was. Course I was saying this two months ago... hehe...

Sasha Soui

03-07-2004, 06:10 PM

but now that I see you guys are serious about saving my game in positive ways I'm happy and plan to keep my 2 accounts going. As long as the changes won't hurt the stuff in my house I'm fine... :) Come visit sometime.. Sahsa Soui on FF, Ices Edge settlement. I believe mine to be one of the best decorated houses on FF :) certainly the prettiest and homeyest..
ss :)

Obiwan

03-07-2004, 07:05 PM

Why do you say you want to keep the ability for people explore the vast expanses of Dereth and then in the same breath say gems to popular settlements are likely to be found traded in the marketplace?

Whats the point of making gems available via vendors in the settlements for that settlement?

Wouldnt it be just as easy to make available all settments currently available at the hubs, buyable from a vendor set up with a house at the current hubs?

This npc guy or gal could sell his gems and trade notes and have available the settlements that used to be at his location in Dereth (the old location of the hub of the, yes ugly, portal hubs)

Now this will probably beg the question..., why are we going to have to now pay for what we can get for free? Convenience is always at a cost...right? Same as the portal gems to newbie towns. I buy them because they are just that, convenient.

SolZer

03-07-2004, 08:24 PM

Please update the UI.

Other than that, I am extremely optimistic about the direction of AC. Thanks for the hard work!

Sol

WordOfPower

03-07-2004, 09:47 PM

Rares, Fellowship buffing, Housing timer ... some great things in store for us.

But I object to removing Housing Portals.

Time and preparation for travel could be enormous.
Extended preparation for a quest as several gems may be needed.
On a quest:
What if a mistake is made? Quest greatly delayed or postoned?
What if someone is late or lost? Sorry Charlie?

Our clan runs many fun, well-attended quests and this change may adversely affect that.

You gave 2 reasons for proposing it:
1. Remove ugliness. Many other ways already listed.
2. Encourage exploration.
This may actually discourage exploration for most. Reasons: char is too slow or too weak or the person has not the time or patience to run.
How many settlements? How many gems? How will trade bots or anyone keep track?

Are there other ways to encourage exploration? The alloy quest is still great as people see new places or places they haven't been to in years. (Gems to get to alloy dungeons? - Yikes!!)
I would like to see something spawn at random locations and times that has a very valuable reward. Maybe the end of a quick quest. Maybe requiring some teamwork. Not limited to a few or the powerful, just limited in spawn time. Much of Dereth would get into travel mode quickly.

Be creative but please leave the housing portals.

Tuor ibn-Huor

03-07-2004, 10:27 PM

The changes that are being made look very interesting, and I love some of the lore progressions that are being made particularly. However, I too feel that removing the housing portals will be more of a detriment to the game than a step forward. Before the housing portals came about, and when I first began playing I spent many hours running between towns and various other locales trying to find certain things or places. While this can be interesting for a short time, eventually even my long attention span became tired. To take away housing settlement portals will place many quests and just basic wanderings at multiple times the length, and will in my opinion reduce the amount of exploration in Dereth as a whole. I had fun, and still do at times, just running around the landscape. Still, the various portals that have been added have personally added to my gameplaying pleasure, and helped me feel more united with the playerbase as a whole.

My 2 p worth. :)

Cash_we

03-08-2004, 03:48 AM

I think rares will be great, is there a plan about adding another slot in the papper doll to equip more items?

Forgot to mention I dont like also the idea of removing settlement portals, one idea I think could work is the hability to summon a 2 way portal tho; using a new kind of gem you could buy from a vendor in a town, you could use that gem and a "tunnel" (2 way portal) could be opened from the town you bought the gem and the place you were when you used the gem. That would be very helpfull for fellowships. I dont know if that could be possible.

Abdula

03-08-2004, 04:35 AM

In regards to JJC’s Post on page 7.

Ever hear the phrase, “you get what you pay for”?

“Self 7's and multibane item spells will only encourage casting. This fully buffed, fully baned character which is all but here already with macros will only push people into playing mages or going to bots because the content demands them to be fully buffed and baned.”

~Multibane item spells = Telling me you’ve never seen armor or other items with multiple spells? It seems every time I hunt or dig around on a mule I find armor with multiple level 6 banes.

“We can forget it because it's wrong. 7's are a full school better than 6's much like 2's are a full school better than 1's. They don't last alot longer either. The 15 minutes is what the level boost was back when there was a difference between most schools. There is nothing special about 7's that can't be said about any other level of magic except they are denied to anyone who doesn't want to play a mage or visit a buffbot.”

~Do you even play a character without magic’s? If so you’re doing something wrong. At higher levels you should be evading a lot or enough where level 6s can sustain you.

“Do characters who don't train armor tinkering deserve the protection that it provides? Do characters who don't train weapon tinkering don't deserve the power that provides? Do characters who don't train alchemy don't deserve the power that alchemy provides? If what you are saying is true then all of those have to be true as well.”

~ Flawed logic. All of those are skills being used by one person to benefit another. Or by themselves to benefit themselves. People without magics can benefit themselves with arcane items as well as others, its called the “other” spell on wands etc.

Shortened version..

If you make a melee or archer character with only item magic you can play just as good as one who has life specialized, you just need to know what you are doing.

Jdd complains a lot.

Solution – remove other spells from magic casting so people have to support themselves, spawn level 7 spells on items and make all magic schools cost 6 points to train and 4 to spec, or spawn level 7 spells on items and make arcane cost a lot more in credits thus defeating the reason why you trained/specialized that skill.

And if you want to use the “I feel I have to use magics other then arcane to survive in this brutal world” line, check how many people have arcane trained/speced odds are you need it to use the cantrips on your items.

Osrik

03-08-2004, 05:43 AM

First of all I love the new format. It is always nice to see what may be in store down the line and get a chance to comment on it before it is too late to make any difference. One thing I would suggest is that when you introduce as many different topics in one letter as you have in this one it would probably be a good idea to have seperate feedback threads for each topic.

Crafting Confirmation

I love this idea. At the moment people tend to be reliant on using web sites or decal plug-ins to get these odds and I think anything that removes the need for a plugin or having to alt-tab out has got to be a good thing

Settlement Portals

On the whole I like this idea as it will make exploration more of an element in the game. The one thing I would say though is that settlement portals have been in the game and available as a means of transport for some time so I think it is important that when they are removed you review the difficulty of reaching different areas of the world and maybe add a few more portals when required.

I do like the idea of being able to carry portal gems to my settlement round with me to give to anyone I invite for a visit. Recently a friend and me who had previously had neibouring apartments brought cottages in different settlements and I miss the convenience of being able to leave items I have found for him in my chest and vice versa. Portal gems will give this convenience back. I think it is important that these gems are nice and cheap so that they can easily be used like this.

House Purchase Timer

I would like to see something done to make it easier for players to get hold of a villa without having to resort to ebay, but I am not convinced what you are proposing will do this. A one month timer would certainly slow down the ebayers, but if they can trade one villa a month on each server that is still probably enough buisness to make it worth them continuing. At the same time the timer could cause frustration to normal players. Imagine the poor person who finally gives up on his dream of a villa and buys a cottage only to have a villa become available during the next month that he is then prevented from buying due to the timer.

New Loot Armor

New armour is all very nice but I am not happy that this is delaying getting the current armour drops sorted out. Why not try to get the armour that is dropping now sorted out first and then worry about adding new armour later.

ArcheronLC

03-08-2004, 07:42 AM

Your proposed dispell changes, honestly, what were you thinking?

Current situation: I'm deep in a quest, the action is going fast an furious, I pop a dispell gem to remove my skill debuffs to give me a SIGNIFICANTLY better chance to land a spell on my enemies, or to remove some vuls and give me that extrta edge in defense.

Your change: I now have to pop a bunch of gems or cast dispell a BUNCH of times, meanwhile, I'm gettin beat upon by multiple opponents and the casters in the back are casting new debuffs on me faster than I can RANDOMLY remove 1-6 per cast?

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???

Explain how this is anything other than a beating with the NERFSTICK?

Here is an alternative fix: You go in and make the level 1-7 dispell spells remove all debuffs for their magic school (self only), then you change the dispell gems from 1 gem that dispells ALL schools to 4 gems, 1 for each school. Spells get fixed (by the way, this fix was PROMISED by the live team YEARS ago) and gems get changes so as to not be more powerful than spells and still provide an alternative for non casting players.

I take no credit for this "alternative fix" it was proposed by a dev along time ago. Maybe it's an idea whose time has finally come?

Dom on TD

03-08-2004, 08:28 AM

Originally posted by ArcheronLC

Here is an alternative fix: You go in and make the level 1-7 dispell spells remove all debuffs for their magic school (self only), then you change the dispell gems from 1 gem that dispells ALL schools to 4 gems, 1 for each school. Spells get fixed (by the way, this fix was PROMISED by the live team YEARS ago) and gems get changes so as to not be more powerful than spells and still provide an alternative for non casting players.

Umm, maybe I'm missing something, but how would you dispell war spells? And item spells are neither self nor other, so I don't see how the dispells would be either. And one last quetsion. How would they be distributed? Just randomly from turning in evis pincers or Vapor Hearts?

me swat

03-08-2004, 10:24 AM

Please keep the settlement portals. Or rethink them.

You do have 'clickable' portals already in game can you not replace the cuurent portals with some kind of statue or sign?

I think removing the settlement portals will increase quest time and actually make folks think twice about doing a quest because adding an extra 10 minutes running time could be the difference between the buffs lasting or not.

JJC

03-08-2004, 10:49 AM

> Ever hear the phrase, “you get what you pay for”?

Yes, and I paid for my equipment to buff me.

> ~Multibane item spells = Telling me you’ve never seen armor or other items with multiple spells? It seems every time I hunt or dig around on a mule I find armor with multiple level 6 banes.

If you can cast one or two spells and be fully baned it would only lead to more people playing casting characters because it can do nothing less.

> Do you even play a character without magic’s? If so you’re doing something wrong. At higher levels you should be evading a lot or enough where level 6s can sustain you.

It's not the melee, but the wars that kill. This problem is magnified by the difference between level 6 and 7 life protections and the vulns cast against me. When the creatures I fight cast level 7 vulns and wars I deserve equal protection against them for the buffing path I chose. Right now between those that cast, those that bot, and those that use lore only the lore characters are denied 7's. There is something fundamentally wrong with that.

How I play, what level I play and if I'm playing right by your definition really doesn't matter in this discussion. The discrepency exists even if people don't play by your rules.

> Flawed logic. All of those are skills being used by one person to benefit another. Or by themselves to benefit themselves. People without magics can benefit themselves with arcane items as well as others, its called the “other” spell on wands etc

If your arguement is that people should benifit more from skills they train and not those ones they let other train then it's not flawed. You can't honestly say that people who train magic deserve 7's because they spent the points, deny those benefits to those that only train lore, and then say it's right to have those benefits given to those who don't even train lore. You can't have a valid arguement with a double standard.

> Solution – remove other spells from magic casting so people have to support themselves, spawn level 7 spells on items and make all magic schools cost 6 points to train and 4 to spec, or spawn level 7 spells on items and make arcane cost a lot more in credits thus defeating the reason why you trained/specialized that skill.

I didn't spec lore because it was cheaper, I speced lore because I didn't want to play a mage. Cost didn't factor into the decision. Removing the other spells isn't a valid solution. Giving the players who don't want to play a mage a way to play at the level of content designed for them is the right way to get it done.

> And if you want to use the “I feel I have to use magics other then arcane to survive in this brutal world” line, check how many people have arcane trained/speced odds are you need it to use the cantrips on your items.

I don't care how many people have trained what skill. If there is an imbalance it deserves to be fixed. This isn't a your template is better than mine, or what all the cool kids are doing. This is simply a debate about the right way to allow people to play the same game in a different way.

JJC

Batu Tenjin

03-08-2004, 11:44 AM

First off, Ibn et.al, the new format for the LttP is great! Giving the players plenty of time to both anticipate exciting new changes and comment on troubling ones is a brilliant idea.

And most of the changes in the In Development and In Concept are either good ideas, or plans that won't have any effect on me.

Some that stand out are the use of Envoys to police the Marketplace, the addition of the Rare items and the possibility of fellowship buffs. All good thinking.

However, like many have already stated, the plan to get rid of Settlement Portals is a poor one.

Despite what you said in the Follow-up, Ibn, the clear intent behind this move is to make it more difficult to traverse Dereth quickly, hence encouraging running and, by default, exploration.

The unintended consequences will be, however, the reduction in the number of quests being run at any time on any given server. It is not uncommon for our allegiance to have "pick-up" quests, where someone will mention they want to do a quest and a handful of people will jump in at the spur of the moment. This will stop cold if every quest needs to have the appropriate portal gems ready to go.

Also as already mentioned, this will make it that much easier for multi-account eBayers to pounce on and sell villas. The cost in both pyreals and pack space for a villa-buying mule to carry every possible settlement gem at all times is nothing compared to the real-life cash return of an eBay sale.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the Settlement Portal plan itself, is your willingness to try to hide the true reasons behind the change. After all, on the face of it, making a change to one of the fundamental systems in the game solely for aesthetic reasons is ridiculous. I didn't believe it even as I was reading it.
And I have never once experienced any lag associated with Settlement Portals, so that excuse is as paper-thin as the "ugliness" one.

Why not treat us as adults (I know, many of us aren't, but even those kids playing have entered into an adult business relationship with you and deserve to be treated as such) and tell us up front that you want to nerf transportation? I still would think it an awful idea, but at least I wouldn't be really disturbed at the attempt to sneak it by us, like some pork-barrel rider on a politician's spending bill.

Congratulations Ibn, you have now sunk to the level of a U.S. Senator.

Stoneheart

03-08-2004, 11:57 AM

What is preventing those people who want to "explore" more from running every place if they want to? Is someone forcing them to use settlement portals?

Hey, I like to explore too. Does that mean I should not use subway and be forced to run everywhere?

Give me a break.

Jack Sparrow

03-08-2004, 12:24 PM

The concept behind the settlement portals needs fine tuning. It has some logical flaws and will defenitly breed contempt.

On a scale of 1 - 10 of ugly and laggy. Settlement portals rate about 3. the settlements themselves rate a 10. To that accord we can simply see this change as an utter NERF.

How so, because to get from point A to point B you have to purchase the transportation device at point B. It's backwards logic and highly frustrating. A) We can't possibly devote a single character to hold all these gems as there are more settlements then pack space. I'm not wasting an entire character to hold these gems. Mind you I still don't visit EVERY settlement all the time. I do visit a significant number regularly.

That being said you run into the situation where you wont have a gem and you have to waste time asking around for it and then to discover no one has it and you have to invest further time running there. This is NOT a friendly strategy to casual players. It will discourage travel as opposed to incourage. "No one has the gem so . . .oh well I just wont go there." will be the mentality.

The idea of portal gems is a good idea but the delivery needs to be adjusted.

It would be wiser to make these gems available at a more centralised location.

For instance:
All of the settlements associated with the Cragstone vicinity would be available for sale at an NPC in Cragstone. . .say at the Agent of Arcanum (you've already got a settlement NPC in the towns!).

This wont nerf the already veteran playerbase that has explored every inch of Dereth to revert to the obnoxious travel systems of old. This nerf is even more frustrating because you've given us Settlement portals for years now and suddely you're ripping it out of our hands. It makes you feel slighly betrayed.

I think your major problem was trying to kill to many birds with one stone. Enticeing these new portal gems as a tradeable item isn't cool. I don't feel like paying an arm and a leg for a lame gem so I can get somewhere. Running to that settlement may not be an option because of time constraints.

To that extent if you were to make the gmes available at the agent of arcanum this change to the settlement system would be in it's entirety an improvement. It would allow us to grab a gem and pop it at the mansion to help decrease travel time during a quest as well as keep those large size fellowships together more easily.

seeker

03-08-2004, 02:06 PM

First of all, thanks for the increased communication.

Many of the proposed changes look interesting, but removing settlement portals would be a really Horrible Thing.

The addition of the housing portals was a tremendous boon to travel, exploring and questing.

Claiming that you want to remove "ugliness" is just a lame excuse to seriously break something that works quite well. If you really cared about it, you would put them in a meeting hall style building or arrange them on lined-up pads.

The only thing this will really accomplish is to severely limit travel, make playing much more tedious and slow, waste valuable pack space and add another expense.
Huge, sweeping changes like this also tend to cause many unintended bad consequences.

Your proposed gem replacement is extremely awkward and impractical and will also result in house-stealers instantly appearing and snatching away housing in mid-transfer.

Your settlement portal proposal has no merit whatsoever. Why would you want to inflict such terrible, painful punishment on us?

Katriel

03-08-2004, 03:45 PM

The additional communication from official AC/Turbine staff is incredibly positive.

Since it has been necessary for the AC playing community to develop its own means of distributing information on basic, as well as new, content, this is a huge step in the right direction!!!!

Overall, I am excited about the future of AC and most of changes and adjustments planned, with the exception of the settlement portal changes.

If ugliness is truly the motivating factor for this change, then I think there are several worthwhile options mentioned in previous replies to this thread.

There is already a good model with the residential quarters portal configuration, cannot this be incorporated somehow, with an untieable, unsummonable, unrecallable entrance/surface portal?

It seems that making the settlement portals available via a gem purchase will only exacerbate the existing issue with housing purchases, or please clarify further if you have already factored this into the equation.

thep33t

03-08-2004, 05:03 PM

A few things I have a comment on.
a) I love your new followups and attempts to keep the playerbase uptpo date on upcoming events.
b) The idea about the settlement portals might not be a great idea as proposed. Possible lookt at moving the portals to a seperate dungeon, or existing residential complex's. Or even possibly make the gem sellers in those places. I believe this would be a good fix at the housing macro thing, for a while, people will find ways around it, and It hurts normal players just as much, if not more then the macroers, so If that is your purpose, i dont think it will work as planned.

R3bb

03-08-2004, 05:19 PM

Finally I like what I see. This was a big step in the right direction to allow the players more time to give input on upcoming changes. I especially like the idea of being able to cast spells that dispell lvl 7 negatives on yourself and on others. I think this will bring a fun, challenging new aspect to DT's group PvP situations.

Thumbs up on this LttP. Thankyou for hearing our concerns and doing something about them. Though I still don't like the changes coming in march =\

P.S. GIVE ARCHERS AN AEGIS WEEPING BOW!!!!!!!!!!

exet

03-08-2004, 05:48 PM

What do I think about your new way of communicating with your paying customers?

Well for me the business about the 'Ugly' housing portals sums it up nicely. It would seem that after you have decided to make a major change to the game you feel might be difficult to justify you decide to come up with a very lame lie.

As has been said here and on other threads already this is a change to far for many of us. Possibly even enough to unsub accounts over.

Do your customers a favour and try not to lie about your reasons and especially don't treat us like idiots.

HeXt

03-08-2004, 06:44 PM

Sounds good to me. Just be careful with the speed ups and giving mages more love. :/

Pvp is already magevsmage and it has been for quite some time, giving them the defensive mod/missile mod is a bad idea.

Stormy_Nightz

03-08-2004, 08:16 PM

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not remove the housing portals. Some of us only have limited time we can play and really don't care to spend it running.

Removing the housing portals is one of the dumbest ideas yet, but to do it because they are 'ugly' ... ABSOLUTELY ABSURD. :mad:

Sabu

03-08-2004, 08:21 PM

Originally posted by exet
What do I think about your new way of communicating with your paying customers?

Well for me the business about the 'Ugly' housing portals sums it up nicely. It would seem that after you have decided to make a major change to the game you feel might be difficult to justify you decide to come up with a very lame lie.

As has been said here and on other threads already this is a change to far for many of us. Possibly even enough to unsub accounts over.

Do your customers a favour and try not to lie about your reasons and especially don't treat us like idiots.
I dont see the great Sin of removing those portals... sure the reason sounds pretty dubious but it isnt a bad idea.

Korgan

03-08-2004, 10:08 PM

Thanks! This is a great way to run the show! I give it two thimbs up!
Now as for the "doing away with settlement portals" I vote "no way no how"! I ran my a** off when I first started playing 4 yrs ago and I don't want to have to start doing it again!

Korgan

Bleys Icefalcon

03-08-2004, 11:35 PM

Ok, riddle me this....

Why is it a problem with some of YOU that some people (like ME) use the settlement portals to get around Dereth quickly?

Jeez, you wanna run all over creation, go ahead! I don't have the 30 minutes to an hour of play time just to "run" somewhere. Ugly? Ummm k. Why not change them to something "less ugly" instead of taking a way to get around Dereth quicker away for those that would use it? Like for instance a Town Hall like building, and INSIDE the various settlement portals... Less Portal Lag unless of course you go in...

Spoiled? Heck YEAH I'm spoiled. And Riddle me this too?

Why is it WHINING if we just so happen to NOT agree with some of the changes?

Horkaw

03-09-2004, 12:29 AM

Thank you for the opportunity to make comments on your concepts for future changes to AC

Removing Housing Portals:

Because there ugly? Thats a little lame. Change them all to concentric circles and you can continue to build on them if needed. Those who have compained about how ugly they are probably have not seen some of the newer monsters being developed and released, now those are ugly..........lol.

Forcing more exploration of Derith at the expense of having to buff more often (using more tapers and scarabs) does not sit well with me. With the change in the loot structure, I am forced to spend more time looting so I can feed my mana, taper and scarab habit. Another thing that does no sit well with me.

Other then that, I like what I am seeing so far. Keep up the great work. "Live Long and be Safe"

Taarna

03-09-2004, 12:37 AM

I dont doubt this has been covered in depth, but I just want to add my opinion.

I strongly disapprove of the removal of the housing portals.

Travel is not terribly unbalanced by their existance. Sped up maybe, but not unbalanced. They are useful for questing, however they only extend to mainland Ostheh. They do not remove the journey to the Direlands or various outlying islands.

nofeir

03-09-2004, 01:15 AM

No one has said for sure if the "portal gems" in question will OPEN a portal to a settlement or simply portal the user there. They're a nerf either way because you'd have to buy (costing money for something that's now free) them and carry them around, which takes up valuable pack space. If they actually open a portal to a settlement that many could use, it wouldn't be "quite" as bad, but it's still a nerf.

Seems to me that Turbine is in "nerf" mode. Take away xp chains we've had since the beginning. Take away great loot we got with a previous patch. Now they want to take away our method of travel, or at least make it much worse to use. Patches USED to GIVE us new functionality and useful items. Lately it seems we're going the other direction.

:mad:

Dark_Omen

03-09-2004, 08:49 AM

Envoys to remove inscriptions?

I personally do not like this idea, as it will allow for yet more thievery, as it has been stated in the past that although a part of life and game, there is no character class which caters to such low-lifes.

While it may seem contrary to my thoughts on insription removal, if that is to be added, why not add the ability to change a characters name?

On a more positive note, there appear to be many good things planned for upcoming patches, and overall I feel that you having ownership of AC once again a positive step in generating the same level of excitement once acheived by "The Team".

Thank you, and good luck.

~~DO

MIdnightFire7

03-09-2004, 09:09 AM

nofeir,

I agree. The major parts of the last few patches, and patches to come look like all Nerfs. Sure they gave as the decrepit tower quest, but that doesnt even work right. If you can even find the stupid token to start it in the first place.

Why should we the player have to pay for portal gems when its allready free? With the current patch dont you devs understand how impossible it is for anyone to make money unless your lvl 1 or 126+. I will no not matter how broke i get start over agian. You are making this game imposible to be fun. It used to be a blast and now that your Nerfing everything its getting harder to enjoy. Guess ill find a Non-Turbine game to play when i can no longer find AC fun at all.

Pepeswiss

03-09-2004, 09:19 AM

Great article!!

It is good to see what your plans are. And I am excited! Most of these plannings are great and I am looking forward to see, how your ideas will get more detailed (e.g. rares, buffing process)

Two thoughts:

Housing portals:
I remember a time we did not have any of these portals. It was possible to get everywhere, of course with some longer runs, but is was possible. Maybe we became lazy. But - I have to admit - I do not understand the given explanations: Portals are ugly??? Häää?? You have some great designers in your team, give them the task to find a more "pretty" way to display those portals.
I also could say... just to give an example ...those scroll vendors in towns are not pretty, they are an ugly way to get all of the scrolls. To much NPC in a building. Crazy. So... is it possible to keep the portals? Removing them will not let me abort the game, but ... lots of reasons to keep them are written in postings above.

Envoys uninscribing items:
This sounds like an enforced employment for Envoys. Do they have nothing to do elsewhere? Why not creating a nice quest with a mechanism or NPC at the end which is uninscribing items?

Paleone

03-09-2004, 10:06 AM

Its good to be able to see what your plans are for the future and that you listen to what players suggests, I know that there is a lot of people out there who wants to be informed so that we can make our voices heard. Most changes you are working on can be considered interesting (I´m not into PvP so I dont read those) some are great and some I cant see the reason for. One thing I think you should take into consideration is The Spell Casting Interface. Today its very unvieldly and its very hard to organize in any useful way. You have plans for making buffing easier and that is good but you should consider doing something to make it easier to be a pure Warmage too. Then you prabably wont need plugins like El Tank just to handle the mundane tasks of spellcasting like buffing and recharging.

Moondancer

03-09-2004, 10:10 AM

I like most of what is being proposed, except for the housing portal gem idea.

If people find the hubs ugly (which personally I do not), then redesign them into something more pleasing to the eye. But the change being proposed will not encourage more exploration, and it will make getting around the world much more tedious. I was in game long before the housing portals were available, and it was boring running for long periods of time to reach a destination. If I want to get somewhere, I want to get there; if I want to explore, then I set out to do that. I know some may say we have become 'lazy', but I come into the game to play and socialize with friends, not spend half my time running. There is also the issue of pack space. I'm already tight for space as it is, as I am sure many are.

However, if you are determined to do this, I would put an NPC in at least some of the major towns that sell the gems, rather than forcing people to have to run to a settlement to get the gem. It wouldn't even have to be every town, just some of the larger ones, say Hebian-To, Cragstone, maybe one or two others.

As for the Envoys uninscribing items, I'm iffy about that. I inscribe something, it's for a reason and I want it to stay put. If someone wants it removed, they can ask me to remove it. It's kind of a way to 'leave our mark' behind. Not to mention, removing inscriptions could make it easier for thieves to get away with stealing items. Surely envoy's have better things to do with their time?

D-K

03-09-2004, 10:54 AM

Greta job on communications Turbine :)

Boo...hisss...on the settlement portal idea :(

Dom on TD

03-09-2004, 11:03 AM

Do ya think you could seperate the 3 sections of the Lttp next time? It was really hard to respond on all 3 threads. I had to keep going back, and scrolling to make sure I was posting in the right place.

kmgff

03-09-2004, 11:49 AM

Sugguested Solution to Settlement Portal Gems vs Professional Villa Buyers:

Whoever use the gem will have their house purchase timer added by one day. So when you use the gem/enter the portal created by gem if it is summon gem, you cannot buy any housing for the next 24 hours.

It should not be that hard to do.

Rojon

03-09-2004, 04:30 PM

Ibn, an important point here...

If other players can now debuff items under the control of another player, we need Item spell timers on those items so we can know when those debuffs will expire.

QuickWeasel

03-09-2004, 04:41 PM

Please, do not remove the settlement portals. This has nothing to do with making the game more fun. It's just tedious if we have to run for 10, 20 or 30 minutes to reach a quest location. If i want to explore i go out and explore. If i want to do a quest, i will not explore, i just hit the Q key until i reach my destination. :mad: :mad: :mad:
It would be a nice idea to move the Settlement portals inside the meeting halls instead.

Bleys Icefalcon

03-09-2004, 04:44 PM

Please re-think doing away with settlement portals....!!!!!!!!

Thank you!

M-T

03-09-2004, 05:19 PM

It all looks awesome except for you're ruining PvP Arc vs Bolt spells.

Thanks i'll be telling all my friends now and they will all quit along side with me.

Im gonna go back to microsoft games because turbine doesn't listen to the people and can't keep the effing game they way we like it.

Rojon

03-09-2004, 11:57 PM

Ibn, instead of nerfing the PvM players with the dispell potions/gems changes, why can't a timer be implemented for PK players?

Portal Gems already have a PK timer and I suspect the gem tech for both types of gems is similar, if not exactly the same, no?

Flastewart

03-10-2004, 09:56 AM

The "repair" of the damage caused by the Feb update is too little and too late. The march off AC is already started. The changes being made here will not make the loot drops any more profitable so you can afford to hunt, it will not make the loot drops of any use to players of the level who are taking these mobs. None of the changes help the problem of Feb. It is a lot of nicce fluff and stuff but no real change to make AC playable for us players under the 80 level mark. Sorry to say but you missed the theme of the massive feedback on the Feb update. Turbine again shows it's "we don't care about your opinion" attitude. I think the only reason for these forums is venting as nothing ever changes that is discussed here. Just my opinion which doesn't matter or count anyway as after seeing this I have deleted all my accounts.

Khemicals

03-10-2004, 10:32 AM

Just a thought on Self Buffing one's armor. I would suggest the player being able to buff his or her armor by placing it in the trade window. Everything placed in window (only if being worn at the time) would be covered by each spell (Bane) cast. This would really help decrease time spent buffing. You could increase comps burnt, if that's a concern? Something definately needs to be done to speed self buffing so more time can be spent hunting, crafting, etc...
Thanks for your time
Khemicals

IsisAG

03-11-2004, 10:54 AM

I love the new functions in chat but it gets very confusing with all the tells I get as a monarch and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Could we please select color changes for our tells and such? So that they are not all the same I mean.

When I'm hunting and getting lots of tells from allegiance and I get a call for help I sometimes miss it and it hurts feelings when they think they are being ignored.

Thank you for your ear on this.

Wind_Dance

03-11-2004, 03:35 PM

I have played AC almost every day, even before DM came out. And I swear, I have never once heard anyone complain about the house settlement ports being ugly. LOL there about as good looking as any other port in Dereth.
It sounds to me its been decided. But you dont get an A for effort for slaping on an excuse for it. I for one will be dissapointed to see the settlement ports go. So we can by gems from the robots in the market place if we are desparate enough to get there. At a cost that would send them to jail in real life.
If you trying to trip up the Ebay dealers, well maybe its a good plan. But it will also stop the ebay dealers if nobody really wants to play AC anymore, there deffinatlly wont be anymore market for housing in AC. Ive enjoy the game AC very much it always lent its self to many types of game intrests. But I do play it for fun and not a job. I consider myself a customer. An would like to continue as long as theres fun to be had and friends to see. But not if it becomes more of an agrivating experiance than the money is worth. Thankyou :)

Picasso2177

03-11-2004, 11:27 PM

^^^^^ Well said and I have to agree. Turbine put the settlements back in please. I never for once thought they looked bad. Nor do I know of anyone that has.

Bruiserk

03-12-2004, 12:33 AM

Nope, never seen a complaint about it before. I guess you need to justify it somehow though.

Zaphod

03-13-2004, 03:21 AM

I spend enough time in this game running around using up buffs getting nowhere without taking away one of the few methods there are of getting from A to B in a reasonable amount of time.

I mean "let's make the game bigger, add more islands, restrict what we can portal tie to, and take away the settlement portals so you have to run everywhere".

Oh! and when we take the settlement portals away, let's make sure we only give them a short time to buy gems so that gems become more expensive than Sing's. And thanks to the obviously level 250+ char with the 500 run with the previously posted thesis, let's make them RECALL and not SUMMON, so our group can't go, just the ones with the gems.

Sounds like some sadist's dream to me.

There are plenty of opportunities for players to have to run around Dereth without taking this away.

I'm not even going to get into the issue of dying in a dungeon 500 miles from the nearest lifestone or tieable portal. I realize you guys spent alot of time on the landscape and you are proud of it, but give me a break.

I did the alloy machine quest over last weekend. We started with 6 people ended with 2 because the others couldn't handle all the running around, and that was WITH the housing portals. I shudder to think how long it would have taken without them.

I remember BETA. I spent all of my time around Rithwic. Never went anywhere because it took too long to get there.

If they have to be pretty, put them in a building or a dungeon. I found it kind of odd to just put them out in the middle of nowhere in the open anyway. Then you lag at the wrong moment and go into the wrong portal. Oops.

You had a mass exodus of players in February. From what I can see, you haven't learned much. Had you really been all that concerned about it, you could have posted something in-game so people would know you gave a ****.

It makes no sense to be stupid again so soon.

Telling us about a stupid idea in advance for our feedback is a great idea. Telling us about a stupid idea with an implementation schedule of less than 30 days is beyond stupid. I mean, you can't write code that fast. Basically, you are telling us that the code is written and being tested to go in next month. Thanks alot.

Oh, and in case you think you can say you told us 30 days in advance so it isn't such a shock or surprise, think again.

I agree with the previous dissertation that a 30-day timer on purchase/abandon/purchase will not affect the villa/mansion highway robbery going on.

Regarding the rest of the ideas, they look reasonable.

------------------------------------------------------
If anyone is offended because my tone is not all that pleasant, I've been playing this game since BETA. I remember what it was like during the "vitae balancing" problems. I recall killing bunnies for hours trying to get rid of it.

I have 2 accounts, I PURCHASED DM for both accounts. While we are on that subject, thanks for giving it away now as a reward to the cheepskates, and no so much as a kiss my foot to the people who PAID for the priviledge. I mean, it would make FAR too much sense to be able to BUY a DM account over the INTERNET now, wouldn't it? OH, but it would take too long to download. Like the monthly updates are a walk in the park? Get serious.

I've played the "watch for a cottage and run real fast to get the item before somebody else does" game, and I've been through all of the changes before these.

I've been gone for long periods of time, and only came back because I could actually make enough money from loot to keep my mage alive, DECAL makes the game reasonably playable, and I could actually get around Dereth again.

I stuck around AC1 when my entire allegiance monarchy went to AC2. Then in February I was so disgusted I almost killed off both accounts for the first time since I've played the game.

I really don't expect this to make any difference. Besides, what's my measly $20/mo to Turbine?

kal-ram

03-13-2004, 05:02 PM

u shouldn't take away housing barriers. its the only place were u can buff and just talk to friends ingame. if u take it away theres no point in buying a mansion if ur just gunna recall in and be killed. If another alleginace raids ur mansion u have to have some protection or advantage because they want to fight u and u may or may not want to fight them.

Bleys Icefalcon

03-15-2004, 07:33 PM

Says Keep them.

Balls in your court, so do we keep them, or...

"AC Isn't a Democracy?"

Ibn

03-17-2004, 04:39 PM

Regarding the settlement portals, please see my final post on the official discussion, here (http://forums.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4242).

Zedon

03-17-2004, 04:59 PM

WOW Turbine wimped out again, turning into another pathetic Company.

Jarella

03-17-2004, 05:29 PM

Dang :( I'm sorry but i think that decision...sucks :(

Gouru

03-17-2004, 05:50 PM

I REALLY hope this is not an indication that Turbine will not take action on THEIR game unless they can reach consensus on the players part.

Looking at the history of AC, that is something that will NEVER happen.

boneyard

03-17-2004, 05:58 PM

why is it so bad turbine sometimes doesnt do something they planned to do. we have seen they do several things no matter what people say and some other things they take back. why the constant complaining no matter what they do?

KirillHuntersun

03-17-2004, 06:07 PM

Because you can't please all the people all the time. And anyone who isn't pleased is likely to sound off - or whine - when they see something done that they don't like.

Obviously, a lot of folks missed the fact that this isn't being dropped altogether. Just like a lot of folks missed that the undoing of the PK changes tomorrow doesn't mean they're being dropped altogether. They're putting a hold on a rather unpopular change until they figure out a way to get the same end-goal without creating massive amounts of work for themselves - which just incidentally will seriously detract from the time they have available for things like content, and certainly would take too long to do before April's event locks down. (Which, if it hasn't happened already, probably will by the beginning of next week.)

The players as a whole are finally getting listened to. As a result, the minority of players who like changes that are getting stopped because of feedback are going to be upset, and upset people complain. That's all there is to it. Personally, I'd rather go with a consensus on issues like this; it allows the players to feel like they have some say in the overall course of the game.

Ibn

03-17-2004, 06:55 PM

There are also degrees of change. For example, I would not call the allegiance XP changes "popular" but we felt very strongly that they were necessary.

The settlement portal changes were not necessary. We felt they were an improvement, but received enough feedback in opposition to that opinion that we decided not to implement the plans we had.

There may be times that we will implement a change in direct opposition to player feedback. There may be other times that we do exactly what the majority wants. Each situation is unique.

We try very hard to listen to player feedback and to improve the game. Sometimes these are the same thing... sometimes they are not.

Jarella

03-17-2004, 07:13 PM

Thats a good point Ibn. I take back my sucks comment...but I really hope you do go ahead and make some other plans.

Televangelist

03-17-2004, 07:20 PM

It's a shame. However, Ibn's reasoning somewhat makes sense.

However, I'd say that for the game's long-term health, it *was* a change that is necessary.

Jarella

03-17-2004, 08:15 PM

Yea I agree with that.

I think a better feedback mechanism is needed. At least a pop up on log in telling all players that there is a question up for debate. And giveing the address of the thread.
Many do not even know these forums exist as of yet. Mostly the casual player types..but i do know a few powerleveler types that do not check boards also. As it is they seem to be getting feedback from only a small proportion of players...and not a representative sample at that.

I also wonder if they check to make sure that each board id is a different player...I know from experience on other boards that some players are perfectly willing to make multiple accounts on a board just for the purpose of inflateing the numbers on a poll.

Cuttler

03-17-2004, 09:09 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
I would not call the allegiance XP changes "popular" but we felt very strongly that they were necessary.

I STRONGLY agree that the allegiance xp passup/passthrough HAD to be changed too. But I also STRONGLY feel that the new system is over kill, deeply hurting the small monarchies. Most of us are not asking to go back to the old system Alex, but we would like to see some passthrough for at least grand patrons and monarchs at a reduced rate than the old system gave out.

Munjed

03-18-2004, 12:22 AM

Ibn..

Are you guys Working on gettin more people red again? (on white servers of course)

Gouru

03-18-2004, 12:47 AM

For what it's worth, I'm very disappointed they have decided to do nothing with the portal gems.

I've wanted to own a villa for some time. However, my whole family plays (each on their own account). My wife, two daughters and two brothers all have accounts, with one or two mules on each one.

We currently own a wing of an apt building, but we've wanted a villa to show off trophies and for the dungeon. Three times I have a chance for a villa, three times I turned it down, because I could not get the lowbie players from all my family's accounts there. Anytime they left the villa, I'd have to go to wherever they were and open a portal for them to get back.

Portal gems were FINALLY going to give me a way to get all the family together at a villa, no matter what level.

Could you still consider making gems available like in your first idea with vendors at the community? Basically do what you were going to do for the first month anyway, just don't follow through with portal removal. Less work than you had originally planned. This would give the residents of a community a way to get friends to their house without having to logon, retie the community portal and open portals for them every time.

seavapor

03-18-2004, 01:23 AM

An excellent decision! The portal changes were not a good idea. I would say that if they appear ugly, you have many cooler looking portals that you could use instead of just standard swirls.

You can tie to your villa's settlement portal so I don't see the problem getting your toons there? Although, I have a cottage in a settlement that has a crater settlement portal. Crater is not an easy set of settlement portals. A better system of town portal gems would be nice.

Grinless

03-18-2004, 08:48 AM

Originally posted by Televangelist
It's a shame. However, Ibn's reasoning somewhat makes sense.

However, I'd say that for the game's long-term health, it *was* a change that is necessary.

Exactly my tought,

Turbine had a hard dilemma on their hands there and they have chosen to listen to the loudest voices. A good choice ? Not in my very humble and irrevelant opinion but, hey, I do understand them.

Take care,

Dereth Mozart

03-18-2004, 09:47 AM

So many people in every which direction of thinking. Did I understand correctly that you're now not going to do any changes on the settlement portals? Frankly, I don't know what all the fuss is about. If you were to remove them, I can see why, because newbs would be very restricted on traveling to low level hunting grounds, and or restricted to using the ls there.
But if I recall correctly, you'd proposed to have them set offlandscape, and someone suggested something similar, so I'm asking again, why not put them in the meeting halls? That way they're still there, more easily located, and not all over the land.
No one ever uses the meeting halls very often that I've seen, so if you're considering removing something, either make them more useful by putting the portals in there, or take out the meeting halls instead of the portals, i.e because in the two years I've played, I've never once seen them used.
Just my two cents.

BuddingBower

03-18-2004, 10:01 AM

Getting alittle sick of the inadequate loot distribution. When if ever will this be fixed????

Its just horrible. My toons are starving as there is no money to be made with all this inferior loot.:confused:

Dereth Mozart

03-18-2004, 11:09 AM

That's another good point buddingbower. I'd noticed that too, that the most I've found are items worth 2-3 k. My husband and I were wondering 'what the heck,' when we'd killed a lvl 53 and found a lvl 2 spell, and other junk items worth no more than 2k all total. It seems to me if you're high enough to kill a lvl 53, and you're a mage, you have much higher spells than lvl 2 so this was redundant, and what's the point of hunting if it's not profitable at all?
My main is a TW, and it costs me on average 10,000 to 20,000k a day to keep stocked in fire spikes, frost spikes, etc. That's not to mention when the cost goes up once I get her to lvl 250 and can weild the greater spikes, and later the deadlies. For higher lvl creatures, who hit harder, I'll need to make trade health elixers because those potions from the healer just doesn't do it sometimes. And that costs a pretty penny too.
Right now, the only thing that's kept me afloat since I don't have hours to spend on running around collecting 2-3 k items to sell; is running along the fishing holes when there's people fishing because I'll find several items from 3-5k there and can get at least 20k per beach comb. I know it's not much, but without it, I don't think I could afford to use my TW, let alone pay maintenance on my house.
Not everyone has hours to play an online game, some of us have to work most of the day, so we get limited time, and if it's not profitable to play, and now the cost of playing is higher (we pay 24+ for two accounts), I'm wondering why do I bother? It's becoming stressful, and with Middle Earth coming this year, I'm thinking maybe I'll change over to that. At least it's something new.

LordShadowz

03-18-2004, 11:18 AM

I would like to give some feedback.

With regard to the settlement portals. I am VERY VERY happy that you decided to keep them in game. They are extremely useful. I think if you removed them it would have been another huge mistake. They make questing quicker and easier. I have been playing AC since beta 0 and have seen it all. When I play now I like to get to where I am going in a timely manner so I can actually play or quest with my friends. THank you for keeping them. To have put gems in would have been ridiculous. We already have enough to carry and buy.

To the reverting of the PK changes back to November. I was one of the more vocal people that were against the changes and i am glad you finally realized you made a mistake. I have not Pked since December and would not have Pk'ed ever again with what you guys had done. You also really disillusioned me to how this game was progressing and your willingness to listen to the players. Thank you for admitting you were wrong and doing the right thing. I will now PK again and have fun !

Thank you again,
Billy
LordShadowz

LordShadowz

03-18-2004, 11:26 AM

Oh and one other piece of feedback.

1) I would like to see more UA weapon quests. Weapons that are actually useful.

2) I would like to see a better way of giving feedback. What I think you guys should do is on the spalsh and login screen place links to the AC forums here and put polls and such ON THE LOGIN screen. This way everyone who logs in and plays will have the ability to give feedback and participate in votes.

Gouru

03-18-2004, 11:36 AM

Originally posted by seavapor
You can tie to your villa's settlement portal so I don't see the problem getting your toons there? Although, I have a cottage in a settlement that has a crater settlement portal. Crater is not an easy set of settlement portals. A better system of town portal gems would be nice.

Level 10 mules tieing to portals and casting portal recall to go home is not really an option.

Overloaded mules attempting to run out to portal rings guarded by monsters is not a good option.

Level 10 mules popping a gem to go home would have been a nice option.

Phone rings. Gouru:'Hello?', BowPeep:'Dad? I just had to go to marketplace and need to get back to the house now. Can you log on and open a portal for me?' Gouru:'What time is it?' BowPeep:"3 AM, why?"

Ibn

03-18-2004, 05:07 PM

Originally posted by LordShadowz
2) I would like to see a better way of giving feedback. What I think you guys should do is on the spalsh and login screen place links to the AC forums here and put polls and such ON THE LOGIN screen. This way everyone who logs in and plays will have the ability to give feedback and participate in votes.

Getting changes made to the login screen is pretty difficult at this point and frequently requires a server restart. I don't think folks would be particularly pleased to have the worlds restart just to get a link to a feedback thread. :)

We are working on better ways of getting feedback, but they'll have to wait until we take over billing and authentication at least.

lashmage

03-18-2004, 05:53 PM

I thought the letter was fine. No complaints.

Paraduck

03-18-2004, 06:32 PM

Well, a possible solution to that would be to post the thread early (before whatever time the login file changes are due to be included into the prop), but have it locked until the servers are live. Or, if moving posts doesn't change the topic id, you could post it in a prviate forum and then move it over to the Feedback forum come patch day.

LordShadowz

03-19-2004, 07:48 AM

Thanks IBN for the reply.

I can definitely understand that. I wouldn't want frequent server restarts either. It's unfortunate that it would be that difficult to do it. Here is another suggestion.

What if instead of the login screen you could incoporate it in the new billing system. I am assuming the way we login will be tied to a website. Maybe when we go to login before the game starts there could be an option to participate in polls etc etc.

The problem with this site is not everyone knows about them believe it or not and not everyone visits. There needs to be a way to have it in front of your face and more would participate. I used to work for The Zone myself in 1998 and 1999. I worked on a game called Fighter Ace. I was an events specialist. I was very in tune with the community and know how things can go. I would have to put things right in there face, and even then sometimes people still didn't know LOL. I just would like to see more participation in a better way. I am glad you guys are finally listening.